The other unique and fascinating way that In Memoriam breaks up the gameplay pattern is by providing you with actual real-time e-mail. I mentioned earlier that you are only one of the investigators SKL hired. Early on in the game, you get an e-mail from your “partner,” introducing herself and offering to collaborate with you. As the game progresses, you not only receive more correspondence from her, but also from SKL itself, other investigators, and even a “profiler” who offers insights into Phoenix’s twisted mind. These e-mails come to your actual e-mail server, and can be accessed either directly through your server or through your computer’s Outlook Express (or whatever software you use)…. all without ever leaving the game or using the old alt-tab to switch tasks. At one point, frustrated by a particular puzzle, I tried sending an e-mail to one of these fictional partners, and I got back a response that addressed my question! I now suspect that that e-mail was triggered by my progress in the game and not by my sending my own e-mail, but at the time it was quite startling. From that point on, I e-mailed several of the game’s fictional characters, and only one came back with a mailer daemon as undeliverable. I have no idea how the geniuses at Lexis Numérique pulled this off, but it provided a real-time sense of fun and urgency that was otherwise missing in In Memoriam. All told, I received more than fifty of these e-mails. By the end of the game, when you are closing in on discovering Phoenix’s whereabouts and letting the police know where (or if) they can find Jack and Karen, the e-mails are flying and there is a real sense of tension as your team coordinates a final assault/rescue. In fact, I got several time-delayed e-mails over the next few days after I finished playing! The fact that you don’t really have to send the e-mails necessary to prompt any of the replies takes away from some of this fun, and in the sequel (and yes, there may well be a sequel) the designers should look at allowing more interactivity with your real-time e-mail buddies.

But again, this in-game e-mail innovation has a downside. Or I should say downsides, as they seem to be all tied together. Because it accesses real e-mail servers, each installation of In Memoriam must be registered at the beginning of play, and each registration with a unique e-mail account. In order to prevent flooding your server with e-mails from the game (which are triggered by in-game actions) there are also no save game slots. Once you are done with something, you are done, period. The game constantly saves your progress during play. When you leave the game, it once again saves automatically. The end result is that if you hit a glitch in the game which cannot be worked around (I did. About ¾ through the game I encountered a Macromedia Director script error which would not let me progress and restarting the game simply brought me back to the page with the script error) you must start a whole new game from scratch using a different e-mail address. This also effectively limits replay value, since not everybody has numerous e-mail accounts or is willing to create one just to play a game. (Note: The second time, the game ran smooth as silk. I don’t know what caused the original error, which occurred in the PHU puzzle, and while there is a patch available, I didn't know it at the time.)

Much has been said about how Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is the most important adventure game in years (or maybe ever) because of how it rethinks gameplay and provides real innovations. All I can say is that BS3 has its work cut out for it if it wants to be more original and innovative than In Memoriam. UbiSoft and Lexis Numérique have definitely raised the bar. This may well be the much-ballyhooed future of adventure gaming.

All’s Well That Ends Well
I said at the beginning of this review that this was the most difficult review I have written. I know already that many people will hate this game because of its lack of exploration, characters and interactive “playable” plot as well as its heavy preponderance of puzzles. Even many who love puzzle-heavy games may have problems with the arcade-style bits, including both a Pac-Man type game and a kind of combination of Space Invaders and Zaxxon as two of the final mini-games. Anybody who prefers only one specific “style” of adventure game is likely to be turned off because the types of games are so incredibly varied. Add to that the inability to save multiple games and the potential disaster of a game glitch and a critic could find much to hate about In Memoriam.

I absolutely loved it.

This was, without a doubt, the most original, bizarre, varied adventure title I have ever played. It not only pushes the envelope of what a game can be and do, it reinvents the envelope. It combines puzzles and games of varying difficulty levels from Nancy Drew to Rama in a fresh, fascinating and seamless mix. Whether I was searching the web for information about murders in Genoa or maneuvering blocks through a maze with rubber bands or setting dolls on fire to play with the remains I was being fully entertained. The acting in the videos was adequate if not outstanding, and the voice-over by Jack in his video log (which strangely didn’t match his voice the few times you heard him speak on camera) was believable if not inspired. The e-mails from your teammates (many of them in comically-yet-all-too-authentic mangled English) were a fun and interesting addition, in at least a couple of instances even allowing you to get a hint of the correspondent’s personality. The graphics are all top-notch and the sound effects (and sound puzzles) are terrific, successfully managing to heighten the atmosphere and really get under your skin.

In Memoriam isn’t perfect. And it certainly isn’t for everybody, so by Adventure Gamers standards I can’t give it more than four stars. (It most certainly does not belong in every gamer’s collection.) But I can happily give it a solid four stars, with the suggestion that it deserves SIX stars in the originality department.