Lost: Via Domus (hands-on)

As much as we love Lost the show, we've always been skeptical of Lost the game. With a cast of dozens, who would you play? With storylines that define genre, what would you do? With such unusual and complex source material, could this adaption work? At all? Following hands-on time with Lost: Via Domus (the subtitle translates to "the way home"), we finally have some answers.

As we reported in our February issue, you control a new character named Elliott. A photojournalist who was escaping Australia with the "story of a lifetime" when Ocean Flight 815 went down, Elliott is now haunted by everything from a vengeful criminal to a romantic betrayal to a case of - why not - amnesia. So although his face may be unfamiliar, the trademark angst and mystery surrounding his history are not.

Besides, the original castaways are all still present and doing exactly what you'd expect of them. Jack orders you around. Locke philosophizes on the beach. Sawyer trades. Michael calls frantically for his son. Kate gives you a royal headache. Their dialogue, guided by a show writer, rang true to us. Surprisingly, so did their voices, despite more than half the cast not participating.

The actual gameplay, on the other hand, seems hit and miss. We sampled three types. The most impressive by far are the flashback puzzles which, as in the series, help our hero unlock keys to his past and to his continued survival in the present. When one of these hazy visions is triggered, the player enters a fog of memory and must follow the right visual clues to snap the right photographs to come away with the right information. Kate giving you attitude? Recall seeing her on the plane in handcuffs and she'll suddenly become much nicer.

Less exciting are the fuse puzzles and, ironically, the action sequences. The former seem to pop up everywhere, asking you to add and subtract voltage across a circuit board until you reach the correct amount of electricity. Think the "pipe dream" hacking minigame in BioShock and you'll know what to expect. The latter found Elliott racing frantically through the jungle with the infamous smoke monster breathing (clicking? rattling?) down his neck... while we merely pushed buttons at scripted moments to ensure he didn't trip over any logs. Yay.

Lost: Via Domus looks to capture much of the show's spirit, personality and atmosphere. Whether it can succeed as a pure game, however, and not just as an interactive spinoff, may remain a mystery until its release on February 26.