Sinking Island looks good and plays well at first, but the myriad oddities eventually drag the game down. It's hard to stay immersed in the story, and the methods of solving the mandates become more like chores after awhile than fun things to do. Hopefully, the next game to come from White Birds Production will be more fun.
Gameplay - 6
Graphics - 7
Sound - 6
Difficulty - Easy/Medium
Concept - 7
Overall -
GameZebo writes:
"In the Agatha Christie-esque adventure game Sinking Island, you play as Jack Norm, a police detective called to a remote tropical island to investigate the not-so-accidental death of Walter Jones, a wheelchair-bound billionaire found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Who did it and what was their motive? This is what you must find out by interrogating the ten suspects, snapping photos and collecting evidence.
While not one of the better adventure games available, this attractive point-and-click detective story might appeal to fans of murder mysteries.
Created by Benoit Sokal, who brought us the awesome Syberia adventure game, Sinking Island is an interactive whodunit that challenges players to piece together clues in order to find a motive and reveal Mr. Jones' murderer. Naturally, everyone on the island is a suspect -- whether it's someone to benefit from a huge inheritance or an angry ex-business associate -- and so you must use logic and deduction to narrow down the list of potential killers."
The Adrenaline Vault : "The pace of the gameplay seems glacially slow. There needs to be a lot more happening to keep your interest while continuously wandering back and forth asking suspects inane questions over and over again. Unraveling the murder mystery has to be accomplished in a relatively linear manner, in which you cannot deviate too much from the predetermined sequence of steps, and this does not help to alleviate the sense of tediousness. The net effect is that it doesn't take too long for you to lose interest, view the gameplay as tiresome, and want to go do something else. Thus, the demands for patience and perseverance are much higher than in most modern adventure titles, and many will not stick with it for the 15 to 25 hours required to make it through from beginning to end."
Throughout all of Sinking Island's faults it still does manage to be interesting throughout the course of the game. This isn't to say that people who aren't diehard fans of B. Sokal should rush out and buy it though. For those not familiar with the Sokal's previous games Sinking Island can probably be skipped. But for those that are willing to overlook the faults and truly enjoy the process of figuring out just what is going on in Sinking Island it is reasonably priced enough to warrant trying out.
