By Dale Farris, Vice President
Golden Triangle PC Club
March 2005

Game Overview

The Tastan civilization succumbed to extinction many years ago, their only legacy being the mysterious Tastan Caverns. Some believe the caverns hold an invaluable treasure, while others say great wealth is attained through the knowledge and technology left behind by this advanced race. Take on the role of Beni and search for the truth as you enter the Caverns on a dangerous quest for riches.

The fictional Tastan civilization is said to have been one of the most advanced in the history of the world. When the Tastan civilization became extinct, they left behind tombs which are the source of tomb robber dreams and nightmares. Like all Tastan tombs, Tomb 35, where you visit many times in this game, is a series of chambers connected by conventional doors and teleportation portals, and usually featuring samples of the special domains the owner cherished in life. Located within each arrangement of chambers will be a central chamber where the occupant's actual remains are said to be housed. Because in life these sampled domains were inevitable different from owner to owner, no Tastan tomb is identical to another. It is because of the nature of the samplings in this particular tomb and the legendary ruthlessness of the guarding Sentinel, the "Dormeuse" defense program, that Tomb 35 is so feared.

The legacy of the Tastan tombs has long held some of the most profound secrets of an extinct race of people. Some believe the tombs hold a fabulous treasure, others say wealth is in the knowledge and technology left behind by this advanced civilizations. You must now search for the truth as you enter the tombs on a dangerous quest for riches.

As you begin your strange and perilous journey, a female sentinel, a holographic image with advanced A.I., positioned there by the ancient Tastans to guard their sacred caverns, awakens. She appears throughout your quest with a sometimes benign purpose, but other times with calculated intentions. You will soon realize that behind the mask of illusions, the sentinel is much more than she appears to be - her dark purpose will threaten your very existence.

Sentinel is a gripping science fiction adventure set more than 1900 years from present day in a rich pastoral region of our own future Earth. It's the story of a young man named Beni who finds himself in the terrifying situation of being forced to enter the most dangerous tomb in a nearby tomb-field left behind by the long-gone Tastan civilization.

After the introductory cinematic, you enter the main tomb. Walk along the bridge and you will have your first encounter with "Dormeuse," the sentinel who proves to be your guide, ally, and your adversary through the adventure. The mysterious people who created these amazing hi-tech tombs were able to upload the personality of the tomb's occupant into its defense system. Are these the occupants themselves, coded into the structures as actual entities, or just simulations?

Summary of Features

From the developers of the best-selling adventure games Mysterious Journey and Mysterious Journey II

Over 20 mind-bending puzzles

Various degrees of difficulty: Easy, Medium and Difficult Puzzles

8 brilliantly inspired, diverse worlds

Includes a built-in hint system

Non-linear style of game play

Beautifully created, colorfully rich 3D environments - from snow-capped mountains to a land of hot active volcanoes

Absolutely unique, highly immersive story

Pre-rendered backgrounds with spectacular scenes and actions

Fascinating, well researched visions of the near future

Save Game

In Sentinel, you can save the game at any time.

Game Play

The influence of the now mythical Myst game series on this game seems apparent, and the comparison is inevitable, but Sentinel manages to take the Myst characteristics and blend the best into its own unique approach to an adventure game. The developer, Detalion, has refined the now well recognized Myst features into a unique new game that will appeal to gamers on its own merits.

Sentinel is a beautiful game to enjoy. The backgrounds and layouts are luscious, heavily detailed, and filled with realistic sounds and sound effects that help define these imagined worlds. If you play this game on a high-end, advanced system, especially with high-end sound card and speakers, and of course the best video card and monitor you can afford, you will be amazed at the wondrous beauty of this game. Sentinel has a deep, original story, difficult but intriguing puzzles, and gorgeous graphics and sound.

Detalion got Terry Dowling, the popular Australian Sci-Fi author, to write the story for Sentinel, just as they did for the game Schizm.

In Sentinel, the artificial intelligence, the sentinel "Dormeuse," confronts you and converses with you on a very regular basis throughout the whole game. Like a good detective story, you are constantly fed new clues and presented with new trains of thought.

The story is complex and will challenge you to keep up with it, as the game very slowly reveals this storyline only after you manage to solve the puzzles and progress through the various worlds.

The developer Detalion used the same Jupiter engine which they used in Mysterious Journey II (or Schizm II). Sentinel provides full 3D environments and you can travel to any pixel you wish. Navigation was effortless with just the mouse. The space-bar allowed you to jump a couple of game inches, but it was never needed in the game. You can also use the keyboard W, A, S, D keys to move yourself around.

You play the game always in first-person view, and the game will zoom in when you click on the many puzzles that must be solved. Also, instead of a typical point-and-click slide-show approach to the graphical layouts, you can move yourself through these environments. The environments are pre-rendered, but this ability to move through the territories adds greatly to the overall beauty of the environments. This full-motion ability is what will challenge your machine, since you are moving through beautifully detailed, richly designed layouts that have a ton of data to be processed.

The cursor is a tiny dot in the center of the screen. This is fine as the only time it is needed is when it is on a hotspot, and then it grows a ring around itself becoming large enough to be noticeable. Since the hotspots are only found with puzzles, you will not have any trouble finding these.

This game does not require you to find a ton of objects to store in an inventory, for later use, for combining with other objects, or for opening. Also, the game has only the one non-playable character, the Sentinel "Dormeuse," who does all the talking in cinematic scenes. There are thus no dialogue options to find and click through in this game.

Also, the game presents no danger of falling off cliffs. If you shouldn't go somewhere, then you are not allowed to go there. These invisible walls protect you from dying from falling or moving into areas that would otherwise kill your character. This may frustrate some gamers who might like to have free roaming ability. However, when a game allows you to go wherever you wish, you also run the risk of dying a lot and having to start over.

Even though you can control your movement forward with the mouse, you will need the keyboard to move backwards.

The graphics are beautiful without any blockiness anywhere. The environments are wonderfully varied and captured. It is snowing in the winter world, and magma bubbles and spurts in the volcano world. Smoke and fire billow majestically. At times the worlds feel small, almost like a shadowbox of the real thing. However, this is intended, as "Dormeuse" says that all she could save were snapshots of the worlds she loved.

Sentinel may not have the artistry of Syberia nor the environmental complexity of Myst IV, but it still succeeds in presenting these worlds marvelously.

The sounds and sound effects were also super. The background, ambient music set the mood in each world, and fans of New Age music will certainly enjoy the Sentinel music.

The voice acting was very good, and the actors seemed to know what situations they were in, and their characterizations were always appropriate.

Sentinel is to a degree non-linear. This means you have a limited degree of control over what realms to visit, especially in the beginning. There are seven total worlds to visit. You may also jump back and forth and do several at the same time. There is no question of what needs to be done within any of the Realms. You explore, listen to the Sentinel, and solve the puzzles you run across. Solving the puzzles opens the way to new areas. Completing a world opens another world for exploration, until all are finished.

Puzzles

The puzzles in Sentinel are some of the most complicated I've run across in many adventure game. While not as difficult as others, these puzzles will require you to seriously approach the challenge, and spend a lot of time roaming around the various worlds to get acquainted with the territory, the other locations in the world, and the game's very enigmatic hints. The game hints will help you eventually figure what to do, but will offer no clues at all how to solve the puzzles.

These challenges are supposedly set up by the Sentinel to thwart your progress in the game. However, because of the always enigmatic conversation  with the Sentinel, these are not that direct and may present still more frustration.

The puzzles are very clever and well integrated within the worlds. Your challenge in each world is to find the world's crystal and return it to Tomb 35. The puzzles are set up to prevent you from finding the crystal.

The game takes a general approach to these puzzles that is repeated in each world. You have to figure out how to get the world to open access to its crystal, and in each world, you find puzzles that have to be solved, in order to get to the eventual puzzle that presents the last layer of difficulty before you can take the crystal.

The puzzles are mostly mechanical in nature, and require you to spend a lot of time going back and forth in the world, trying this or that lever, button, or slider, and then going back to see the effect of the action. At least in Sentinel you are not solving puzzles that have an impact in an entirely different world you cannot see or get to at the time, as in prior Myst games.

Some of these puzzles are quite difficult, and will require hours of puzzling about, with also a lot of going back and forth, so I heartily recommend using the game's official strategy guide to help you through the game's more difficult challenges.

The puzzles in Sentinel are not for novice adventure gamers, and will also greatly challenge serious, well experienced gamers. Even with the official strategy guide, some of the puzzles I solved with help still make no sense to me. However, this is not that unusual in adventure games, as many readers know that when playing adventure games you have to set your mind to adapt to the peculiar logic found only in computer adventure games.

There are sound puzzles in the game, but these were done right and actually quite interesting, although as difficult and complex as the other puzzles. The game provides none of the old-fashioned slider puzzles, nor are there any timed puzzles. Instead of having to tell the difference between a C-Sharp and an E-Flat, you have to listen to the difference between a saxophone and a fog horn, for example, or different creaky stair sounds, or different barrel roll sounds.

There is a built-in hint system. If you turn it on then a single line of text appears at the top of the screen when you approach a puzzle. This text explains the purpose of the puzzle and might say, for example, “Make all the lights come on at once.”

There were also a couple of puzzles which were based on color and might be difficult for people with color blindness or low-end monitors.

About The Walkthrough Solution Guides

I urge anyone interested in this neat game to also consider getting a copy of the solutions guide. In this game, the guide will really come in handy, because of the need to be sure to know where to go and most especially how to solve the many puzzles. I also had to refer to an online walkthrough, as the official guide did not provide enough detail help with some of the puzzles.

I found the online guide at www.the-spoiler.com.

n my situation, playing with a walkthrough means I can concentrate on moving the game plot along, and most importantly, open up all the wonderful scenes and action that the coders have worked so hard to include in the game. Without a walkthrough, I just feel I am not getting my money's worth out of the game. Also, I always appreciate having the help to get through the game so I can savor all the impressive screens and animated cut-scenes, as was the intent of the game creators.

What makes this issue even more relevant here is that DreamCatcher seems to realize this, as evidenced by their always wise price points for their games and their solution guides. You end up with a total investment that means you will be better assured you can get through the game and not end up spending an excessive amount of time with the game. So, no, I don't think using a walkthrough solution guide is any indication of any lack of skill or abilities, but instead, a more appropriate way to invest minimal time with an adventure game, that ends up much more likely to be a fun experience.

Game Saves

You can save your game at any point.

Targeted Customers

This adventure game is certainly a must for adventure game fans, but novice gamers might find the game's puzzles a bit too difficult. While this game certainly does not include the most difficult of all adventure game puzzles, these puzzles will definitely challenge those new to adventure games. The strategy guide will make playing the game that much more fun for those new to adventure games, but even experienced gamers used to this level of complexity will likely need help figuring how to solve the game's puzzles.

System Requirements

P-III 800 MHz or higher (2GHz or higher recommended)
Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP
128MB RAM (256 MB recommended for XP)
1.6GB free hard disk space
24x CD Rom drive or faster
64MB 3D DirectX Video Card (128 MB recommended)
DirectX 8.1
Mouse
Keyboard

Install and Setup

The game should install and set up with no problems, and the game will load nearly 2GB of data onto a machine. The game comes on 2 CD ROM discs, and the game disc does NOT need to be placed in the CD ROM drive in order to play the game.

Uninstalling the game involves the use of the games uninstall feature in its folder on the Start, Programs menu.

Also, the game provides you with the ability to change some of the settings by pressing the Esc key to bring up the settings changes and to allow you to save the game.

I loaded the game on a Win XP Pro machine (P III-850, 256MB SDRAM) that had a Creative Labs Annihilator 2, 32MB video card (an nVidia GeForce 2 GTS board), and a Creative Labs Live X Gamer! sound board, and the latest drivers for each. An HP CD RW 9200 drive served as the CD ROM drive. The mouse and keyboard were both PS/2 connections. I also had already installed the DirectX 9 files. My machine also had an internal Zip 250 drive, standard floppy, one 8-port USB hub, a Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick, standard microphone, Cambridge Soundworks DTS 2000 speaker system, and a NIC board connected to SW Bell's DSL modem.

Note that this system is certainly not a high-end, state-of-the-art configured system. If you have a higher end machine, with a better video and sound card, more RAM, and a faster CPU, this game will definitely be even more impressive. On my system, although the game did play, I think game play will be far more impressive on higher end systems. I noticed frequent lags in gameplay, mainly when panning around the game's detailed layouts and backgrounds, but on higher end machines this game should flawlessly perform.

Price

$19.99 (Super Bargain)
$  9.99 the official strategy & solutions guide (a great bargain also)

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, Playstation 2 computer entertainment system, GameCube, and Xbox.

About DreamCatcher

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. Since that time, DreamCatcher has become one of the most successful small-sized publisher in the entertainment software industry, and was the fastest growing publisher in 2000, growing over 800% according to PC Data. DreamCatcher Interactive was listed in Profitguide.com's article: Canada's Fastest Growing Companies 2002, and ranked #5.

In 1996, DreamCatcher Interactive launched their first title and since then, they have become a very successful publisher in the computer game entertainment software industry. In my opinion, one of this company's strongest assets is their dedication to provide customers with high quality entertainment software at very affordable prices. Some of the best interactive computer games now on the market come from DreamCatcher.

Bringing to market titles that are affordable, without jeopardizing content quality, is another significant factor that helps distinguish this company from the many that flood the market with countless game titles. DreamCatcher thrives on innovative marketing strategies, solid retail and developer partnerships, and on providing excellent customer support that is well above industry standards.

A new partnership with Her Interactive has enabled DreamCatcher to now sell the super games in the Nancy Drew series, including Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill, Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger, and Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion. Check this link to read a review of these Nancy Drew Interactive Mystery Adventure Games.

Dracula: The Resurrection and In Cold Blood are two current games for the PC that will soon be released for the Playstation, and DreamCatcher also plans to release more games in the future for the Playstation 2 and the GameBoy Color platforms.

Necronomicon ($19.99) and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin ($19.99) are two of DreamCatcher's newer games that should also prove to be successful titles in their long list of super adventure games.

Other super games from DreamCatcher Interactive include Traitor's Gate, The Messenger, Riddle of the Sphinx, Jewels of the Oracle, Jewels II, Egypt 1156 B.C., Odyssey, TimeScape, Ancient Conquest, Beyond Time, Beyond Atlantis, Lightbringer, Legend of Lotus Spring, Nightlong, Seven Games of the Soul (also sold in Europe as Faust), SafeCracker, The Forgotten, The Sacred Amulet, and Time Machine.

All these are similarly designed adventure games, and all are priced very reasonably, the most expensive being $29.99 (In Cold Blood), with most around $14.99, and many even priced at $9.99, which I think are super prices for these super games. At the time of this writing, I have purchased and played nearly all these games, and these reasonable price points have always gotten my attention.

I think these affordable price points represent a very important strategy of DreamCatcher that has helped them achieve their success. When you consider the very expensive proposition to invest in the coding and other very expensive costs to develop and produce a computer game today, I think it is quite remarkable that this company markets their products at such a reasonable price.

I also think it is important to remember that DreamCatcher is still very much in the business of producing quality computer games, something many other companies can no longer attest to since they have gone out of business. What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is that at the time of this writing, DreamCatcher Interactive remains wholly owned and self-sufficient, and has not yet been absorbed by a larger company.

So, with the easy on the pocket-book price of the game, and the also minimal price of the solution guides, you have the makings of a winner in the hotly contested battle for our limited disposable income and free time to invest in playing computer games. DreamCatcher Interactive is certainly a company worth watching and supporting.

Contact Information

The Adventure Company
DreamCatcher
5000 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3H 5T5
info@adventurecompanygames.com
www.adventurecompanygames.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.