You do it to yourself -- you do, and that's what really hurts

I bought the Lost video game on Friday night, as I indicated I would. And I finished it last night, somewhat short of the promised twelve hours of gameplay. How was it? For non-Lost viewers, I imagine it would be a mediocre gaming experience with an unintelligible story -- virtually every dialogue contains a reference or inside joke from the show, and characters and places are suddenly thrust into the narrative without introduction or explanation. The game is extraordinarily linear, with a handful of boring Myst-like fusebox puzzles. For true Lost fans, though...it's even worse.

The dialogue is dreadful, and comes off as poorly written fan fiction. And it doesn't even work as video game dialogue -- they're described as "dialogue trees," but they're not trees. They're just lists of questions that always get the same answers no matter what order you ask them, and almost all of them are pointless. All the voice actors -- even the handful of real actors from the show -- sound like they're on downers (except Michael Emerson, who just can't help being awesome). The jackass doing Locke's voice, particularly, needed a Mana Potion -- I'm sure two months' worth of vitamin B12 would've given some life to his performance.

It is fun to explore the island, for a while -- and the section where you get to wander around the Swan is a blast. It should've been a lot longer, in fact...as should the rest of the game. It may have been stupid and badly written, but it also cost me sixty dollars -- I shouldn't be done with it the next day, especially when it has absolutely no replay value whatsoever. Oh, I guess I could go back through it to find the secret objects I'm supposed to snap photos of, but all you unlock are pieces of concept art -- whoopty-shit.

One of these days, I'm going to remember that I always get screwed over when I buy these Lost tie-in products. I'm going to remember it before I buy the thing, not after.

But hey, I guess that's what happens to a Lost whore -- you get screwed.

*rimshot*

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Now playing: The Decemberists - The Mariner's Revenge Song
via FoxyTunes