Tunguska event

In June 30, 1908 a huge explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river. Probably caused by an airburst of a comet or asteroid, the explosion destroyed an estimated 60 million trees over 830 sq mi. Unfortunately because of the isolation of this region, there are no scientific testimonies from that period. During the next few years, the World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War could have destroyed any testimony that could existed after such an expedition. The first official expedition took place in 1921 and it was guided by mineralogist Leonid Kulik. The conclusion was that the explosion was caused by a giant meteorite impact. Because of the lack of evidence from year 1908, a lot of speculative hypotheses occurred such as: the passing of a black hole, antimatter falling from sky, natural H-bomb, electromagnetism, UFOs.

The story

In general the story is based more upon this speculative hypothesis, making the game more interesting. Nina and Max, the heroes of this adventure, will have to discover the secret of Tunguska and what does the Russian Secret Service has to do with it. Nina Kalenkow, the central character of the story, decides to search the mystery of her father disappearing, the scientist Vladimir Kalenkov. Along with her father's collegue Max, they begin the search. Vladimir Kalenkow, known for his two expeditions made in Tunguska and his work concentrated more on some artefacts found at the site of explosion, began to be a hunted person, not only by the Russian Secret Service, but also by a billionaire. He discovered that, these artifacts consisting in exotic matter, could be manipulated in order to give the user unlimited powers. I don't think is necessarily continue unrevealing the whole story. You will discover it along the gameplay.

Dialog

Very proud of creating a huge amount of dialogs between the characters of the game, the developer made a big mistake by not concentrating more on their quality. There are moments where the dialogs could be much shorter. You will realize that you will skip some of the dialogs just because there are not interesting at all. Despite presenting more clues of the puzzles, the dialogs are full of stupid questions and obvious answers.

The Voices

In the English version of the game (tested by me), the voices are hilarious. The developer declared that the characters' voices are performed by real actors. I didn't had the chance to see the German version, but the English version is just a cheap translation in words, made by three or four 'actors'. Imagine that the Russians, especially the soldiers have American accent. There are actors that perform two or three characters but with a different accent. I will let you decide who are these characters.

The Gameplay

The gameplay is ruled by the "Snoop Key", a feature very useful in such games. Pressing this key, you will be able to see all the important places from a scene where you can find clues or useful objects. You don't need anymore to hover the cursor on the whole surface of the screen in order to find any clue. Very useful especially in this game where the puzzles and quests are plenty. Until the middle of the game, the gameplay is moderate, but from that point on, the puzzles began to be much more complex. The whole gameplay will change in a long chain of puzzles which can be solved only by weird usage and combinations of objects. From this point of view, the game is very similar to "The Longest Journey", a masterpiece from the point of story and atmosphere created by Funcom and especially Ragnar Tornquist.

Puzzles

These objects can be found sometimes too far from the actual puzzle or too early in the game giving you the feeling that you forgot to do something. An example can be the silicone tube, found in the secret base in Antarctica in the second room of the building. This will help you later by communicating with Max. The solution is more than crazy and at a first glance without any logical meaning. You will have to imprint with the help of the silicone a "Dangerous" sign, in order to show it to Max on a video camera. In conclusion forget about mechanical or logical puzzles. Only the intuition and the experience of playing such games will make you find the right solutions.

Max & Nina

Nina seems to be a female Indiana Jones but under 14 years old. Her voice and her attitude are far from a funny and mature character such as April Ryan (The Longest Journey) or Nicole Collard (Broken Sword series). Max is a cheap copy of George Stobbart (Broken Sword series), with very few lines to say (comparing to Nina). The good think is that the game gives you the ability to play with him in some key points in the game, but he is far from having special abilities. He plays an important part when you have to free Nina from a hospital and when he finds Lord Morangie in Ireland. The only true connection between the two characters appears in the Russian hospital where somehow Nina and Max need to communicate. A thin line of rope with a stone bent at one end of it is the only thing that connects them. Through this rope they can exchange different objects from their inventory while the game gives you the ability to control both of them in different aspects. In the end you will help both of them to get out of that hospital.