NiBiRu

By Dale Farris, Secretary Golden Triangle PC Club November 2005 Game Overview In NiBiRu: Age of Secrets you play as Martin Holan, a linguistics and archeology student who has been contacted by his uncle to examine a mysterious World War II tunnel unearthed while building a new highway in Bohemia. A friend of Martin’s uncle is supposed to meet Martin upon his arrival to brief him on the mysterious discovery. However, when he arrives in Prague he discovers she has been murdered. What begins as a short expedition to Prague to examine an enigmatic tunnel turns into a dangerous and thrilling mystery, where murder, deception, the deep dark secrets of the Nazis, and the demise of the Mayan civilization, have our hero reeling into the heart of an exhilarating adventure. Super Included Features A riveting new graphic adventure from the creators of Black Mirror 80 breathtaking locations created in rich photo-realistic detail Multiple chapters of intense story telling Highly detailed and fluid 3D character animation Over 35 interesting NPC characters to interact with Atmospheric visual effects including: fog, rain, daytime and nighttime gameplay sequences Captivating musical score and sound effects immerse you deeper into the plot Game Background Czech publisher Future Games, that brought us The Black Mirror, now presents NiBiRu: The Messenger of the Gods. Yes, the secretive and occult twelfth planet hovering far beyond our reaches has inspired this Eastern European team to create a true sci-fi adventure. In 1976, Zechariah Sitchin composed and published a book entitled The Twelfth Planet, which delved into Sumerian texts and proclaimed their writings as truth. Their records state that the inhabitants of NiBiRu invaded earth, mined it for gold, devastated it, and then left. There have been many reports of such a planet in a variety of creation myths throughout time, and this author even goes so far as to directly state that modern religious texts as well refer to this mysterious Planet X. The name may sound familiar to a few adventure game enthusiasts who were around in 1998, when the company’s Posel Bohu, or just plain The Messenger of the Gods, won Czech adventure game of the year. The core of the story is back, but with promised improvements and innovations in order to bring the NiBiRu mystery to life. In Western Bohemia, construction crews stumble upon a mysterious manmade tunnel, later discovered to be a Nazi chamber hidden at the end of World War II. News of the tunnel spreads like wildfire and ignites interest in a Professor Wilde. You play Wilde’s nephew, Martin Holan, crossing the entire world in search of answers. You eventually untangle an intricately weaved tapestry of ancient civilizations and mysterious technologies, if you can stay alive. NiBiRu boasts sharp and detailed 2D backdrops. The rich, slightly subdued coloring has returned for the better, but scenes look much sharper due to the increased resolution. While The Black Mirror runs in 800x600, NiBiRu will run in 1024x768, making the esoteric discoveries more realistic and enthralling than ever. The characters are all 3D. NiBiRu also uses the same AGDS (Advanced Graphic Development System) created for The Black Mirror, but the engine has in a sense been turned up a notch, now enabling 3D characters, anti-aliasing, and volumetric effects. While The Black Mirror is said to have lasted players between 15 and 30 hours to complete, NiBiRu will last even less, shortening character dialogue and skipping some of the more nitpicky puzzle design. NiBiRu promises to deliver story-turn after story-turn to keep everyone glued to the screen. GamePlay Mysterious foes without any qualms about murdering people for information are aware of the mine and its connection with the Nazi search for the missing planet, so there's a definite Indiana Jones vibe to the entire adventure. Although Holan is voiced terribly (and, oddly, without any sort of European accent, despite him apparently hailing from the Czech Republic), there is a lot of character to his exploits. He doesn't whip out a bullwhip or leap across any chasms, but he does pull off stunts like climbing down an apartment building in the dead of night, and he does run across more than one corpse in his travels. Puzzles are all over the map. Virtually every type of brainteaser ever included in an adventure game is on display here. Most of them are fairly traditional in that you do a lot of talking and a lot of gathering objects that need to be combined to open a door, start up a generator, short out the lights in a building with a vase full of water, or feed a guard bad mushrooms so that his resulting diarrhea lets you sneak past him. The only annoyance is that you can never skip steps. Picking up those mushrooms, for example, isn't even an option until the guard tells you that he's hungry. You often have to sit through two or three lengthy conversations before puzzle-solving items become available, which becomes tiresome in spots because many solutions can be figured out well before the game chooses to reveal them. Still, all you need to solve most of the problems is some common sense and the patience to explore your surroundings. However, there are a couple of occasions when the game pushes the envelope of the absurdities for which adventure games have long gotten a lot of bad press. The more bizarre solutions aren't overly obscure, but it's still awfully hard to imagine any real-world situation where you would throw firecrackers at nearby birds to attract the attention of an apparently deaf old man, affix a stick of dynamite to a rat to blow open a sealed passageway, or access a fire escape by bribing an old woman with a hot dog. Most of the challenge in NiBiRu comes from situations that arise from dealing with unhelpful people and sealed rooms, not from set-piece logic puzzles. There are a few of these in the later stages of the game which all share a Rubik's Cube theme. You need to arrange triangular shapes into a pattern, sort colored beads into a cross, and slide panels into various positions in order to open doors. Some of these puzzles are particularly arduous and represent what I consider to be the worst of adventure gaming, features that have helped give this genre its bad reputation among electronic gamers. The sliding colored beads puzzle involves about a hundred mouse clicks in order to finally get the beads all in the right place, and while typical of adventure games this puzzle likely will rile gamers with short attention spans and little patience. Most of the puzzles can be solved with a reasonable amount of trial and error, so the frustration factor is low even if you're not a fan of these sorts of riddles, but I strongly suggest those new to this type of game also get a copy of a walkthrough to help them through the more frustrating puzzle solving. Judging by the number of corpses that you encounter, it seems like somebody is taking the NiBiRu myth pretty darn seriously. Adding to the adventurous ambience are some impressive production values. NiBiRu was first released in 1998 as the Czech-only Posel Bohu, but it has been so completely overhauled that you would never know it. Most scenes look great, with a tremendous amount of detail. Some of the scenes in Prague and Paris feature such incredible detail that they wouldn't look out of place on picture postcards. The 3D animations aren't as stunning. Models are somewhat blurry, especially in the facial features department, and they move awkwardly. Holan lumbers through his quest so ramrod-straight that he might as well be auditioning for a role as a lamppost. Audio quality is also here and there. The musical score is so understated that it's barely there, and the voice acting is absolutely horrible, with some characters speaking with laughably fake European accents (including a Jewish one that sounds like Mel Brooks doing his familiar riff on an elderly rabbi) and others speaking with no inflections at all. Only a few people provided the voice samples for the entire game, so characters seem at times to be having conversations with themselves. Atmospheric sound effects are rich and lively, and the sound conveys a feeling of place, whether you're listening to the crickets on a nighttime street in Prague or hearing the rush of water flowing under the bridge beneath your feet in the German countryside. Targeted Customers NiBiRu is obviously targeted to fans of the adventure game genre, especially those who enjoy working on frustrating puzzles that require hundreds of mouse clicks that have to be planned in advance. The game offers a solid story that will intrigue players, as they struggle to get through the puzzles and get to the end of the story. The design and layout are nicely presented, and the plot lines are nicely broken up into logical sequences. However, the many times laughable voice-overs tend to break the suspense, but serious gamers will have long since gotten over this minor point, as they focus instead on advancing the story to get to the end of this interesting premise. I also suggest novice gamers seriously consider getting a copy of the walkthrough guide for the game, or finding a public posting of a game guide. This will come in handy especially when needing help with the game's more difficult puzzles. Price $19.99 Minimum System Configuration Requirements Pentium III 800MHz or compatible processor Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP 128MB RAM 2.5GB free hard disk space 16x CD/DVD-ROM Drive 32MB DirectX 3D Compatible Video Card DirectX Compatible Sound Card Keyboard Mouse Speakers About The Adventure Company The Adventure Company, a division of DreamCatcher, is a leading publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment devoted exclusively to releasing titles geared towards adventure gamers. The Adventure Company is committed to publishing games that deliver maximum value on multiple platforms including, PC, PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, GameCube, and Xbox. The Adventure Company’s parent DreamCatcher launched its first title in 1996, with a small band of people who believed in providing customers with quality entertainment software at affordable prices. Contact Information The Adventure Company DreamCatcher Interactive, Inc. 5000 Dufferin Street, Building R Toronto, Ontario Canada M3H 5T5 www.adventurecompanygames.com