Astraware’s Hidden Expedition: Titanic is a saga by its own. If I had a penny for each time I read its name on a Windows Mobile or Palm site, I would be swimming in gold now. You can imagine that when it got released for Symbian, I had to immediately get my hands on it, and give it a nice spin.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth probably more, here is a video I made on my N95-1 playing HE: Titanic, so you can have a good taste of it before we tackle the full review.
In HE: Titanic, you are a diver set to find items hidden in the sunk Titanic ship. The game presents 14 different dives in 17 locations on the ship. Each dive consists of 2 or 3 locations in the Titanic, from the Bedroom to the Bathroom, the Library, the Bridge,… In the location, there are a lot of items hidden in the scene and you are given a list of 12 that you should find. In every given location, the items will be always hidden at the same place, but the list of the ones you will find differs each time you enter this location, making the game less obvious. At the end of each dive, there’s a bonus level which is either a dive, either a photo to put together. Now you may think that a bonus level is not mandatory, but you’ll find out that you have to finish it in order to advance. The “bonus” part is due to the fact that, if it’s a dive, the list of items you have to find is always the same and that you are given a picture of these items beforehand making it easier to locate them in the scene. At the end of the 14th dive, you are presented with one last level to achieve in order to get the Crown Jewels.
The Perks
The more you play, the more you will get used to some locations and be able to locate most of the items very quickly, but still the difficulty will rise. This is due to the fact that in the first dives, you have 2 locations (plus bonus) to achieve in 25 minutes, whereas in the last dive you have 20 minutes for 3 locations (plus bonus). If the oxygen runs out, you have to restart the whole dive and not just the location you are in.
Some locations are also more difficult than the others because the items are blended so well with the scene it’s basically impossible for the average human eye to find them.
Another thing to take into consideration is that there are two ways to lose oxygen time, and one way to gain some. Losing oxygen time occurs when you hit an item that is not on the list (7 seconds deduced for each wrong hit) or when you press the “Hint” button (1 minute and 30 seconds deduced for each hint). Gaining oxygen is achieved by finding an oxygen tank that is hidden in particular locations (4 minutes added). You may think that hitting the “Hint” button drains too much oxygen, but sometimes you will need it in order to grab that Cheese Grater or that Horseshoe that you can’t seem to find.
Menus & Settings
HE: Titanic runs smoothly on S60 and only requires the d-pad to navigate the scene and the center button to press on an item. It’s as intuitive as it can get. You can’t map these buttons to the 2/4/6/8 but then again this is not needed. You can control the game sounds, brightness, the placement of the mini-map as well as switch the hint/menu buttons. To be honest with you, this is more settings than you will need to play this game.
There are also a High Scores page with each dive’s best score, and a Help menu with a couple of instructions you might want to look at (this is where I learned about the Oxygen tanks that add time).
Like Astraware’s Boardgames, HE: Titanic also works in landscape mode, but it will require you to relaunch the application. This may be a bummer for some of you, but it’s still an awesome idea from Astraware to even include the landscape mode in the first place.
Playing it
HE: Titanic requires three major skills in order to be played. At the beginning of the game, you will need an excellent Visual ability because you have to discover the locations and learn the placement of items, you will also need to know a lot of English technical terms. Being that English is only my 3rd language, I was stuck many times trying to figure out what a Lei or a Bobber or a Sextant are, and most of the time, I’d give up and hit “Hint”. The third skill required is memory: the more you play, the faster you will find items in a location that you have already explored before if you can remember where you found them. I believe this is where I excelled, because I have a deadly short term memory.
Verdict
HE: Titanic is Astraware’s second released game for Symbian (check our review of Boardgames here) and they have done it right once again. The game is smooth with no errors and no lags, the settings are very fit for this kind of game, and the gameplay is very intuitive.
Despite this, I have 3 main issues with it:
- I have still to find any logic in the last level (the crown jewels): there is no items list, nothing is explained, and it turns out that you have to find some items that will give you the secret combination. These items aren’t the same each time you reach this level. I personally finished it by trying to keep as much oxygen as I could from the 14th dive and just hitting “Hint” until all the items were located.
- There are a lot of notification texts that appear when playing, and being the game freak that I am, I just wanted to turn them off. A “never show this again” option would’ve been perfect.
The last issue is a relative one. HE: Titanic is an addictive game, so addictive in fact that I kept playing it and finished it in less than 2 days, making the game relatively short. For a price point of 19.95$ I would’ve expected to be entertained for at least 4-5 days, even with the hectic rhythm at which I was playing. Personally, I would like Astraware to update this game with at least 20 dives (25 – 30 would be good) in order to fulfill the die-hard players’ eagerness.
Despite these 3 points, Astraware HE: Titanic gets a Recommended rating from us, and is guaranteed to keep you entertained for at least a couple of weeks if you’re a casual gamer. And to celebrate this, we were able to grab Symbian-Guru readers a 25% discount code, making the game cost around 15$. If you want it, you can head over here for the S60 version or here for the UIQ version, click “Buy It”, then use the green “Got a Promotional Code” link to enter the discount code: HETGURU. Now this is a good deal!
