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Saturday 13 February 2016

TITANIC: ADVENTURE OUT OF TIME


It's the time of year for love and romance, and what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than with wanton destruction and needless death. For some reason, the disaster that was the sinking of the Titanic has become synonymous with star-crossed love stories, even before Kate let go of Leo's frozen hand. Adventure A year before that movie's massive success, Cyberflix Incorporated decided to take us on an eerily accurate recreation of the famous ship in Titanic: Adventures out of Time.

The attention to detail in this game is incredibly impressive. The entire ship has been recreated so accurately that it feels like your traipsing around a ghost ship. All of the characters are live actors, most of whom possess the actual names of those unfortunate passengers. Even the character you play, Frank Carlson, is a real-life survivor. I say "survivor" but in truth, he never made it on board due to some perfectly timed car troubles in Cherbourg. Despite this, and perhaps because of all of the confusion the disaster must have caused, official Titanic documents label him as "Supposed Drowned".

That's where the historical accuracy ends, however. You begin the game in your London apartment in the April of 1942. While hiding from your landlady, an air raid alarm rings out and bombs fall from the sky. It's the blitz - a far cry away from the decadence of a luxury ship. Even so, the only logical step from this point is to magically transport you back in time to 1912, just before the maiden voyage of the doomed vessel.

I have no idea why they chose to have this intro. I guess it thematically links to elements of the main story, but not by much. In fact, the main story is more of a mystery filled with political intrigue (sorry if you were expecting something a little more steamy). It even poses the preposterous possibility that Carlson is a secret agent on a mission to retrieve the priceless copy of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. In truth, this jewel-bound book was sold at auction to an American collector for a mere £402 and is now lost to the sea before he could receive his purchase.

There are as many twists, turns and backstabbing to this rather serious story that can be a lot to take in. You mostly progress by speaking to the many people dotted around the giant ship, and by listening intently. There's so much information and clues given to you that jotting them down in a notebook is a must. There are only a small number of inventory puzzles and a couple of clumsy action sequence, but overall this is very much a leisurely experience.

Or you can just ignore any and all of this and just explore the digital Titanic like you were on holiday. There are 10 interesting tours you can take, each with some educational detail about the building, sailing and sinking of the ship. If you don't want to bother about the story and any fantastical inaccuracies it will have then this segment is for you. You can even visit familiar scenes from the famous 1997 Oscar-winning movie. It's obvious that both titles did their research as each is remarkably similar to each other.

The game map is so sprawling and massive that it's a wonder how they still had time to fill each pre-rendered backgrounds with such accurate historic detail.  Nevertheless, it's still very easy to get lost (maybe people in the 1910s had a far better sense of direction), but get rid of that sinking feeling - the bell-hop will help! This character perhaps embodies the only real negative I have with the game; the animation. The character sprites are sourced from photographs, so when their talking there's an uncanny mouth movement that's very unsettling. The developers also thought it would be a good idea to make them all move like a malfunctioning Robby the Robot. The bell-hop is so disconcertingly kinetic that if he existed in real life, you'd want to keep a good 10-foot radius from him for fear of being hit. It may have looked OK for 1996, but now I find it at odds with the competent voice acting and the overly serious story and setting.

If you can get past this, you'll be immersed in a memorable adventure. Those curious at what the Titanic actually looked like will find the most enjoyment, but if you can persevere with the large number of conversations and high difficulty, you'll find that what's here is no disaster.


**UPDATE**
As of 28th December 2017, Titanic: Adventures Out of Time is now available to buy DRM-free on Good Old Games.

Buy from GOG


Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is © Cyberflix Incorporated
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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15 comments:

  1. Thank you for this, I loved this game back when I was a kid.

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  3. WOW! What a release! This was one of the best, challenging, haunting and of course technically advanced graphic adventure games of that era!

    I really can't believe this re-release came out which works like a charm on my Windows 7 x64 machine without a hassle!

    Thank you very much for this!

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  4. Thank you! It's telling that this game is still used when demonstrating the layout of the ship itself. I've not been so successful with all games I've tried to get working but I'm glad I managed this one.

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  5. Hey Biffman,

    Firstly, your blog and collection is unbelievable. I am so glad I found this site. Games I haven't been able to play for years and you made it possible! Thank you!

    Secondly (because we always want more...), do you do requests? I am having a hell of a time trying to get some windows 3.1 games to work. Mainly, Dark Seed 2 and Star Trek Klingon. Any ideas how to get these up and running?

    Thanks again. I find myself checking the site multiple times a day for updates now. Love it!

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    1. Hello Josh. I have managed to get both Dark Seed games working, and they are on my list. I don't have Klingon (or the similar Borg for that matter) so I'll have to investigate them.

      I'll be adding a new game today after a hectic couple of months that's taken me away from this site.

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    2. How about Magic School Bus games?

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  6. Man, many many years ago, when I was still a kid and my PC was running Windows 95, this was one of my favourite games. Too bad I didn't have internet connection at that time, and the game was pretty difficult. I was stuck at finding the Rubaiyat. So instead spent hours exploring the ship aimlessly :p

    OK, actually I finished the game in 2001. Time to play the game once again, I guess :D

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  7. Man, amazing! How did you do it?

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  8. Titanic on GOG/Steam has awful movement glitches not seen when game first came out.

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    1. Sadly I cannot comment on what official distributers do with their releases. I own the GOG version and it looks like any compatibily workarounds are embedded through their custom .exe called TitanicStart.exe. I've just tried it and not seen any noticeable glitches so far, but you may want to play around with compatibility settings to see if that helps. Otherwise, contact GOG themselves for support.

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  9. how can i play fall of the titanic i cant get on the game it looks like fun please help me get to play

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    1. It looks like Fall of the Titanic has been removed from Steam, probably due to quality reasons. It's too new to fall into the remit of this site though.

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