Lost

Before we talk about what Lost - The Video Game is, we ought to breathe a sigh of relief for what it isn't. It isn't a first-person shooter; a re-run of Far Cry with Jack blasting Others in the jungle. It isn't a Tomb Raider action-adventure, with Locke playing Lara, leaping from cliff to cliff or clambering up vines as he makes his way into the Black Rock to get dynamite. Nor is it a survival strategy game featuring the different characters in different activities. Help Sawyer scavenge and barter, then try and stop Hurley scoffing all the food in station 3. For this we should be sincerely grateful.

Instead, Ubisoft has taken another tack and made Lost into what they're calling a survival adventure game capturing, as producer Gadi Pollack explains, "the meaning and experience of the show." The development team worked with the creative team behind Lost, including J.J. Abrams and Daman Lindelof, to build the basic vision, and did extensive focus-testing with both hardcore gamers and more casual Lost fans to find out what people wanted to see in a Lost game. The result is a game that hinges more on plot, characters and interaction than straight-up action; if people want to play Lost, then they want to feel like part of the show and get involved with the characters they know and love. Myst and Beyond Good and Evil are, apparently, key influences, which should play well to the show's mainstream audience.

Of course, this left Ubisoft with a problem: how do you build a new interactive thread around a series with a large, ensemble cast, an incredibly tangled plot, and a rabid fanbase that will spot any fudges or continuity errors introduced. The answer the team came up with was to introduce a new character with his own plotline and back story. "We decided to play a new character, and wanted to give players of the game a feeling that they could relate to this character and feel like they're having their own unique Lost experience" says Pollack.

Kicking off with the pilot episode's plane crash and running through seven episodes that take us from there to the end of season two, Lost - The Video Game is the story of Elliott, a journalist photographer who - rather conveniently - suffers from amnesia. This last bit is crucial, because while Elliott is busy helping the survival efforts and making his own discoveries in the here and now of the island, he'll also be exploring his own past-life through fully interactive flashbacks. Yep, just as in the series you'll be journeying back in time to find out what put Elliott on the doomed Oceanic flight, and how it all links into his experiences following the disaster. What has Elliott done that he can't remember? Who is the girl in the jungle? Why is the sinister guy in the suit out to kill him? All will eventually be revealed.

In terms of actual gameplay, the majority of the game looks like the sort of dialogue and inventory-driven, puzzle-solving extravaganza that adventure fans will be used to, only based on the sort of third-person view and control system you might find in a more conventional action/adventure. For example, your first encounter is with Kate in the jungle. Chat with her and she hands you a bottle. This triggers a flashback, and completing the right actions in this gives you a new line of dialogue. Use this, and Kate will give you a crucial hint as to how to get back to the crash site. Later on, you'll be swapping items and information in order to progress. As with the series, there is a little action thrown in - we're promised run-ins with the Others and the mysterious black smoke as the game unfolds. The idea is that Elliott's story doesn't change what we've already seen on the TV, but fits in as a parallel narrative. You won't, for example, blow up the hatch door, but you will be aware when it happens.

There's no question that Ubisoft has taken the right approach here, and the team has got the most important thing - the Lost look and feel - down pat. Episodes begin with a ‘Previously on Lost' recap and end with a proper, Lost-style cliffhanger. The flashbacks work brilliantly, with a hazy treatment on the visuals while you're still making sense of the clues - looking around and taking snaps with your camera plays a vital role here - then a more straightforward rendition once you've put all the pieces together. Meanwhile, Ubisoft has worked with Dawn Kelly, a writer on the show, to keep the storylines and dialogue in-line with what fans expect, and series composer Michael Giacchino to provide key themes and incidental music for the soundtrack.

We can also look forward to exploring many of the key locations in the show, all meticulously recreated using photographs taken on location in Hawaii. We've already seen the beach camp and the jungle, plus tantalising glimpses of the caves and The Swan. We're also promised the interior of The Black Rock plus the Flame Station from season three.

However, the demo and short playtest we've experienced so far does leave us with a couple of worries. First, the team seems to be relying heavily on fusebox puzzles as a recurrent theme throughout the game, increasing in difficulty as the player makes progress. These basically involve fitting fuses of the correct size in the right position and rotation in order to complete a circuit while reducing the voltage to a preset level. Such puzzles can be challenging, but how many do you really want to see in one game?

And for a game that majors on character interaction, the characters themselves aren't 100 per cent convincing. We're not too concerned about the use of soundalikes for many of the key figures - while only the actors behind Ben, Mikhail, Sun, Desmond, Claire and Tom have recorded dialogue for the game, Ubisoft has clearly gone to great lengths to find solid alternatives for Jack, Locke, Kate, Sawyer and the rest. However, the decision to stick with fixed dialogue rather than a branching tree - while making the game a lot less complex to make and design - means that every conversational gambit meets with the same fixed response (though this does at least differ for each character and change as the game moves on). And maybe we've been spoilt by Mass Effect and Uncharted, but while the models look realistic, even up close, the facial animation systems have that dead-eyed, unnatural look that instantly screams ‘uncanny valley.'

That said, these things might seem less jarring seen within the final game. Ubisoft is going all-out to make a strong addition to the Lost canon - it's been reiterated time and time again that this is not some ropey side project and that the team is keen to please Abrams and Lindelof, who are gamers themselves. Much rests on Elliott himself and his own story. At the moment, he comes across as a shifty, unlikable figure, but if we know anything about Lost, it's that nobody is what they seem on the surface. Certainly there's plenty of intriguing stuff in his past and his future. We look forward to untangling more of Lost's mysteries at the end of February.

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Uzeo jasebi ali pocela zen da odmah igra i kolko sam dosad video,sve je to ok i lepo izgleda ali ono sto mi se nije svidelo jeste to sto ima previse price,al bas ga preterase kolko ima tih dugackih dijaloga u igri...

smara 200% 

Ja nisam pikao ali dobro mi izgleda.

pa ja probao kod ortaka i smorili me odma iako znam sta se desava u seriji jer sam celu odgledao 

Ma ja bih ovu Kjet uhh 

nemozesh da odgledahs selu seriju kada se josh snima nego kako je puni naziv ove igrice.. nije valjda samo LOST

Samo Lost.

sve epizode sto sam mogao ja sam odgledao   

Pun naziv igre je Lost Via Domus,a kao sto kaze Samurai seriju je vecina odavno odgledala,ono sto je dosad snimljeno smo odgledali,tj.sva tri serijala i ako ide po seriji onda je i glupo igrati kad znas sta ce se sve desavati u igri i na osnovu odgledanog trailera vidim da ifu skoro identicno po seriji.