Timelapse

GTE Entertainment

By Scot Rhoads

Time-lapse offers a good contrast to the previous two. Its graphics are yet a step above Crystal Skull, but is otherwise inferior. The story is a hash of recently popular, yet over used, ancient astronaut related plots and devices. You journey through the worlds of the Easter Islanders, Egyptians, Maya, Anasazi and Atlanteans. Its instant familiarity and bad writing make the story unengaging, but to its credit, Timelapse has a satisfyingly dramatic ending. The acting and writing are so relentlessly amateurish that they are at first annoying, then funny, and finally annoying again. Yet the writers have done enough research to maintain a compelling technobabble, no small feat considering the quantity of babbling involved. You will probably learn a thing of two playing this game. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine which things you learn are accurate. Timelapse teaches about the different cultures like Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride teaches about the Colonial era.

The designers deserve commendation for the camera feature of the game, allowing you to avoid the painfully necessary laboriously copying endless pattern clues. But they deserve to have the commendation taken back for pointlessly crippling the feature by making the window too small and limiting it to 36 exposures. (Was this a futile and inexplicable nod to realism?) Perhaps future designers will get it right. A properly functional camera would make many games much less burdensome.

The game aspects of Timelapse wander from the stupid, to the exasperating, to the fun. Many times you may wonder what the authors were thinking, particularly when facing a puzzle that involves relentlessly working through every permutation without any clues or finesse. I felt they had a personal grudge against my free time. If nothing else, such chores make one appreciate the puzzles that are merely waiting through the right series random events, or applying painfully obvious clues. There are some impressive cheat files at users.deltanet.com/users/balmond/timelaps/timelaps.htm and www.gamezilla.com/cheats/timelapswk.htm. Go for it.

As in Jurassic Park, the computer steals the show in Timelapse. As advertised, the scenes are breathtaking: Easter Island, Egypt, the lands of the Anasazi and Maya, and Atlantis, all as interpreted by Hollywood. As usual, the locations seem to have been neutron bombed, but a few animations of animal denizens and such keep things from seeming entirely lifeless. The scenes are so gorgeous that, armed with a cheat file, you may readily forgive the puzzles, acting, story and superficiality. The Egyptian and Mayan temples are achingly beautiful, though all the worlds are worthy. Check out the official game site at www.im.gte.com. It offers many beautiful pictures from Timelapse and some surprisingly good links! If you enjoy outstanding computer generated scenery, get your wallet and download a cheat file. If you want information or an entertaining story for your money, look elsewhere, and look hard.

SR