About the Game
I never had watched the X-Files until
the 95-96 season. From then on I had been hooked, and appropriately, this game takes
place during that season. The player is Craig Willmore, an upcoming FBI agent stationed
in Seattle, WA. The game begins as you are briefed and then joined by Assistant Director
Skinner in an attempt to find the missing agents Mulder and Scully. The game is unique
to a franchise games in that the characters from the show are played by the actual
actors. If you're a fan of the Lucas Arts games, you'll appreciate seeing and interacting
with the actors who actually make the characters who they are.
The game is a seven CD set, and while that seems impressive, it's not as big as you
would think. The game is a hybrid and includes both Mac and Windows versions. The
game is also well constructed so you never have to revert to a previous disk. What
I mean by this is even though you went to a certain location on Disk One, and even
 though you
never have to return, if you decide to go back in Disk Five, Disk One isn't needed.
Every disk has the information for all past locations on it to minimize switching
disks. Including all this information combined with the amount of video in the game
constitutes a considerable amount of disk space.
The game includes Apple's QuickTime 3.0
and uses it for the video sequences. Because X-Files: The Game is presented
as an interactive story, the game is heavy on video. The player interviews and questions
other characters as the supporting characters provide insight into the case. A significant
amount of time is spent just watching events take place.
Game Play
X-Files uses "VirtualCinema" technology to place the player inside
the game. The game scenes consist of high resolution still pictures of real locations.
Navigation is similar to games like Myst and Riven as hot spots indicate where you
can move and what objects you can look at and control with your cursor. Depending
on what system the game is running, the navigation can be choppy and a little awkward
at times. I played it on a 180 MHz 604e processor with an ATI
Xclaim 3D accelerator with Rage Pro. On this system, the game still ran a little
jerky at full quality. Moving it to a G3 made game play a little smoother. The game
recommends at least a 180 MHz 603e. Some users may have to sacrifice quality for
a smooth gaming experience.
Navigation through the game can be confusing at times. For example, sometimes when
I turned right, I turned 90 degrees and others I turned 180. At times it can be confusing
to figure out where you are going and where you have been. Each screen however loaded
quickly and the only times I needed to wait was when something was about to happen
that required video. When something was about it happen, there would be a short pause
that can foreshadow something is around the corner. Changing locations on the game
can take an extended period of time to load. The extra load time can be annoying
when it interrupts the game's momentum. You'll see this in almost any game of this
type, and unfortunately it is pretty much expected.
Toys
The biggest gadget used in the game is a MessagePad 2000. The PDA is central to the
game's control. The Newton functions as a way to transport between locations, it
automatically stores notes on your progress, contains contact information, which
is never really used, and can be used to read e-mail. E-mail in the game turns out
to be important since other characters in the game use e-mail to provide the player
with information.
The other big toy is a Nokia cell phone -- something a X-File FBI agent could never
do with out. The phone comes with most of the character's phone number preprogrammed
in, but if someone is called out of the blue, the game just covers by throwing the
user into voice mail. Kind of like real life, except the  voice mail never works. The phone is used a
few times in the game but is never really utilized.
Agent Willmore also carries an assortment of spook gear like lock picks, night vision
goggles, binoculars, flashlight, and of course a gun. Oh, and don't forget your Apple
QuickTake 200 either.
Choose You Own Adventure
X-Files: The Game has an interesting feature that I have never quite seen
in a game before. In the game, the player doesn't just react, but interacts with
the character. The player can talk to the characters via a pop up menu with a number
of questions or answers. Depending on the input, the characters will respond differently.
I've even found by mixing the order of my questions, I sometimes get a different
response. Another interesting feature is the emotion response. Here you select how
you want to act, whether it be mad, calm, serious, etc. While these features are
interesting to play with, ultimately everything leads down one of two paths. Either
you advance in the game or you fail. Because the story moves linearly, not too much
variation can be played out. Either way, it's fun to see what happens and it does
make the game re-playable.
Nuts and Bolts
The game is put together in an interesting way. Since the game is so dependent on
video to tell its story, there is a large library of video clips. And since there
are so many ways a scene can unfold, the clips are small and the game compiles them
on the fly. The result is kind of a dynamic editing that is a little unusual and
can at times be distracting. This method of presenting the movies works well for
this style of game. For example say if there are three cameras shots and the third
one is dependent on what the player says or does in reference to the first two clips.
The game take three individual shots and pieces them together instead of having three
full versions of the same scene. The result is a very customizable scene without
having large multiple video clips. The down side however is some of the scenes are
choppy. For example in one scene there are a few jump cuts, but each camera shot
is an individual file that the game pieces together. Instead of a smooth sequence
of shots that was edited before hand, the game pieces the shots together and takes
the chance of being jerky. It's a cleaver way of running the scene, but once in a
while it backfires.
Unfortunately the game does have its bugs. I've found at times if you don't do something
in a certain order, you can get  in a jam. On Disk 3 is the worse case I found. I found myself stuck when
I didn't show someone information in the right order. Once gain, because the story
is linear the player needs to finish all tasks before the game can move on. I found
myself in a jam when I needed to show a character a number of items I found. After
showing the character an item, I could not show them one of the other items I needed
to advance the game. I had to start over and show the items in what was apparently
the correct order. The game is ordinarily not picky about how the player goes about
things, however this is one spot where I got backed into a corner with no way out.
Another bug in the game deals with the actual saving. The game is great because it
lets you save anywhere you want. You don't need check points or save only at certain
times. You can save anywhere at anytime and return to the exact spot and time. The
problem is, the saving is a little too exact. You can save while a movie is playing
which could make it impossible to return. For example, at one point I just finished
a pretty daunting task and I didn't saved for a while, so I wanted to save quickly
before I moved on. Well, while trying to get the menu button to work, I guess I waited
too long because the game started advancing without any commands. I ended up saving
right when someone was about to shoot me. When I tried to reload the game, I would
go right to the point before the guy shot me. I couldn't move out of the situation,
so that saved game was useless. I had to go back to an earlier save and move forward.
The best advice for playing this game is save often with multiple files.
Clairvoyance
X-Files isn't meant to be one of those games to keep you stuck for hours.
I pretty much played through the game with only stumbling a few times. One reason
I like the game is because the story's momentum doesn't get kill by some puzzle that is completely
unrelated to the plot. The game is so big and so in-depth that it doesn't need to
resort to holding you back. However, it's not impossible to get stuck. Like I said,
you need to finish all tasks before you can advance the game to the next chapter.
If you can't find something or if you forget something, you may need some help. There's
an option to select intuition and you too can be like Mulder and come up with some
wild solution out of no where. When selected, the option is there for you to use
or to ignore so it can be reserved for when you're really stuck.
Another helper is your superior, Agent Shanks. If you're stuck and he happens to
be in his office, you can stop by and ask for some help. He'll review your notes
and give you a hint on where you might have missed something.
Something else that's kind of strange is an option for subliminal messages. When
activated, the game will occasionally flash a message on the screen. It only looks
like a flicker, and honestly I could never read the messages. I saw in a newsgroup
somewhere that one person was stuck and decided to go nuts with his gun. He started
shooting randomly everywhere and he said the subliminal messages start flashing messages
like "they're right behind you."
The Sequel
I don't want to ruin anything, but I'll just say the door is left wide open for more
of these games.
Conclusions
Even just the casual X-Files fan will get a kick out of this game. But if
you never watched the show, you'll do fine as long as you know the show is about
aliens and government conspiracies. The big X-Files fans will appreciate some
of the little things found while searching Murder's motel room for example. In the
room are a number of references from the show such as sunflower seeds, sweet potato
pie, Murder's famous screwdrivers, and you can even pick up your own copy of Jose
Chungs's book. It's a family game however so no pornography.
You don't actually interact with Mulder and Scully until the end, but I personally
didn't miss it. The characters in the game were interesting enough to keep me playing.
The game reminded me of another game called Spycraft
from Activision. I almost never spend more than 20 minutes playing a game, but both
the X-Files game and Spycraft kept me playing until I finished. If
you liked Spycraft, you'll probably like this one.
All this fun comes in a pretty big install. The full-install took up about 350 MB
on my hard drive and the application wanted about 20 MB of RAM. The game did utilize
what it put on the hard drive. When playing, it really ran the drive hard.
The game was pretty fun and it wasn't so hard to be irritating. Some gamers might
think it is too easy, but I get more enjoyment from the story than solving puzzles.
The player can select the game's difficulty for his or her own tastes. As I said,
there are a number of characters from the show. Something I'm puzzled about is Cancer
Man. William Davis is in the opening credits, and I did see him once when I died.
I think if I had never died at one particular spot, I would have never seen the character.
Perhaps he's down a path I never took. If anyone finds him, let me know.
X-Files is a pretty high-end game. It's one of those games that will make
you appreciate the upgrades in your Mac. I'd suggest hooking up a great set of speakers
to your Mac, lock yourself in a dark room, and have someone slide food under the
door once in a while.
Pros: Actual actors alone make the game worthwhile. Uses latest QuickTime
3.0. Scenes use high quality images and movies. Interesting plot and story with good
supporting characters keep the player interested
Cons: Some bugs can make the game unplayable. Navigation is awkward in some
areas and game play can be jerky. Extended pauses between scenes can also be awkward.
Large memory and hard drive requirements might make users sacrifice quality for performance.
I found a great page for X-Files tips is. A couple times I got some help from
X-Files: The Game Central. |
