| Review
NiBiRu:
Age of Secrets
Review by Shannon Hall
September 26, 2005 |
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 Something
wonderful happens when you mix Mayans, aliens, and Nazis. If you’re
looking to make a good adventure game, you really can’t go wrong
with this particular trifecta. Well, you could, but you’d have
to try pretty hard. That’s why I was so excited at the prospect
of playing Future Games’ Nibiru. After
all, it contained all my favorite elements, neatly rolled into one
little ball of gaming pleasure—ancient civilizations, conspiracies,
alien legacies, Nazis, murder. Man, if only it had the Knights Templar,
it could have been…. Broken Sword!
Although the Knights made nary a mention, this game did have yet another
element in common with the Broken Sword
series, or so I thought. I’ll return to this point later.
In the meantime, let’s
recap the important points of the story line. Our hero is a young
linguistics and archeology student by the name of Marin Holan. Martin
has traveled to Prague at the behest of his uncle, an esteemed professor
in search of clues to a mystery. What begins as a minor quest to speak
with his uncle’s friend in Prague ends in murder… which
begins an adventure of an entirely different sort. Eventually the
grim specter of Nazis is raised, and nothing good can ever come of
that. One interesting thing about Martin is that, while ostensibly
European, he speaks with a California accent, which is to say, no
accent at all.
 In
fact, I spent the entire game absolutely certain that I was listening
to the same actor who brought Broken Sword’s
George Stobbart to life. I was so certain that it didn’t even
occur to me to check the credits until the end of the game. Turns
out, Rolf Saxon was not listed as a voice talent. Instead the voice
of Martin Holan, the lead character, was done by Rory O’Shea.
This explained a couple of things that had me confused. While O’Shea
does an overall good job of voice acting, he lacks that certain panache
that marks all of George Stobbart’s lines, and it comes off
as a bit flat. Of course, this could also be due to the difference
in writing. There are no clever quips or astute observations to give
this game depth. Dialogue is pretty much the meat-and-potatoes sort.
Speaking of line delivery,
this is a good time to mention the similarities—and the differences—between
this game and Black
Mirror, also from Future Games. Now, I for one was
a huge Black Mirror fan, although I fully
acknowledge the flaws that garnered such mixed reviews. In BM,
the horrid dialogue and delivery were glaringly obvious, so much so
that it bordered on unintentional comedy. The developers seem to have
taken due note of this, and didn’t make the same mistakes in
Nibiru. While neither the writing nor the
acting is likely to win any awards, they’re also not impediments
to the game.
 Of
course, Black Mirror wouldn’t have
lodged itself in my brain so firmly if it hadn’t had good points
as well, and those were definitely carried over to Nibiru.
I recognized the graphics style, the architectural elements, and puzzle
types as well. That the graphics and game play should be similar is
no surprise. After all, both games were created using the AGDS engine.
As in Black Mirror, the characters’
movements are somewhat stilted, but the surroundings are lush, dark,
and ambient. This particular game engine renders very realistic environments,
and lends itself particularly to melancholy, dreamy landscapes filled
with rain and fog, and the sparse sound echoes the sentiments perfectly.
Another element that blended
seamlessly most of the time was the puzzles. I say most of the time
because they degenerated into slider puzzles toward the end. I’m
not sure whether the developers just ran out of ideas, or they though
slider puzzles were a must-have in any adventure game, but the result
was a triple-whammy at the conclusion. I much preferred the problem-solving
puzzles found in the rest of the game, which were highly believable
for each situation.
 If
you’re trying to pass cheap wine off as an expensive vintage,
it just makes sense to grab a spare bottle from a wino. What else
would you do? And if you need to distract a repairman, creating a
short in an electrical circuit is just the ticket. Those are the sort
of puzzles that make Nibiru an all-around
great game for mystery/ adventure fans. By and large the puzzles are
not arcane or mysterious, they’re just common sense.
Now, I’ve already
mentioned the many diverse concepts that get introduced in the game.
That’s a lot of material to pack into one story line, and the
writers have done a passable job of tying them together. Unfortunately
some aspects just kind of get dropped along the way, and picked back
up toward the end as sort of an afterthought. I’m speaking specifically
of the aliens theme here, and to some extent, the Nazis. While it
was necessary to garner the name of the mysterious 12th planet (Nibiru),
and it adds something of an occult twist, it really didn’t seem
central to the theme at all.
 It
began as an idea just tossed around by Martin’s uncle, and makes
a final, unimpressive showing at the end. Speaking of the end, don’t
get me started. I hate to beat a dead horse here, but I’m going
to have to drag Black Mirror into the mix
once again. I think of all the games I’ve played, none has had
such an odd, abrupt, dissatisfying ending as that game. But where
BM left me saying ,”Whaaaa?!!!!,”
Nibiru simply left me staring blankly. It
made sense… sort of. But it had the feel of someone quickly
dashing to conclude a story with too many elements, and not enough
time. Kind of like a reviewer who really needs to wrap things up,
so she compresses her final thoughts into one small, final paragraph:
While my last few impressions
of the game left me slightly sour, they didn’t override the
excitement I felt throughout the rest of the game. I thoroughly enjoyed
the mystery, the puzzles, and the graphics, and felt right at home
with much of it. In the same spirit that caused me to love Black
Mirror despite its laughable flaws, I’m going
to have to give Nibiru an A-.
Final Grade: A-
(find
out more about our grading system)
System Requirements:
- OS: Windows® 95/98/ME/2000/XP
- CPU: 800 MHz Pentium®
3 (or compatible)
- RAM: 128 MB RAM
- Free Hard Disk Space:
2.5 GB
- CD/DVD-ROM Drive: 16x
- Video: 32 MB DirectX®
3D Compatible Video Card
- Sound: DirectX®
Compatible Sound Card
- Input: Keyboard, Mouse
and Speakers
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