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 The Secret Files: Tunguska (Game release date: 2006) Serviceable but overly formulaic graphic adventure. Walkthrough page
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 | Highlights: Smooth interface, nice graphics |
 | Lowlights: Clumsy writing, stupid inventory puzzles, linear plot |
Style: Tunguska is a third-person puzzle-adventure game with a point-and-click interface. You control a single
character for most of the adventure, a bland young woman named Nina, though you do get to switch back and forth between her and her even
blander partner Max at some points in the game. The plot is a mysterious conspiracy and there are supernatural and science-fiction themes.
The game is untimed and no manual dexterity is required. Combat and leveling are not elements.
Series: Secret Files: Tunguska is not yet part of a series, though the game designers say they are at work on
a sequel.
Finding Tunguska: This is a relatively recent game and can still be found in some software stores.
Here it is for sale online at Amazon.
If you're a fan of graphic adventure games in general, this is one of the games included on the
Adventure Collection DVD, so you could pick up
five decent-quality adventure games for less than $20.
Getting Tunguska to Work: I didn't encounter any problems installing or running Tunguska on XP.
Like most games released before 2007, it apparently has a few issues with Vista, but the Adventure Company has issued a
patch
that should help with that.
Hints For Tunguska: I don't have a Tunguska hints page available at this time-- to be honest, such a linear game
really wouldn't benefit much from my low-spoiler hint treatment. If you ever get stuck, the answer is almost always to click every object in your
inventory on every other object until they combine with each other. But if you're the impatient sort, I recommend the
UHS website, which
reveals only one hint at a time, so you won't accidentally learn the answers to future puzzles while scanning for the one you're stuck on.
Game Length: 15 hours or so. Since the game doesn't waste as much of your time on interface-wrangling as some graphic
adventures do, it was a good length.
Age-Appropriateness: Tunguska is rated T (for 13 years old and up) due to four-letter words and embarrassingly
idiotic sexual innuendo and bathroom humor.
(Pretty Good)
Plot and Quests: The plot is acceptable but very predictable, and the player
is given no meaningful clues or information about the underlying mystery until the game is nearly over.
Puzzles and Mental Challenges: Most of this game consists of rote inventory
exercises that pose no challenge at all, but there are also a half-dozen true puzzles scattered throughout.
Characters: The two main characters, Nina and Max, have no identifiable personalities
and undergo no character development; you cannot customize or develop them at all, not even by methods so superficial as choosing dialogue options
on their behalf. Minor characters are mostly forgettable, with only a few exceptions (one interesting, two exceedingly annoying.)
Gameworld: Tunguska is set in generic version of Europe.
There's no change in mood or ambience as Nina moves from country to country, and there's never any sense of place.
Gameplay: Extremely rote. Except for the puzzle interludes, this game could be
played by a trained monkey clicking randomly on hotspots and inventory items until something happened and the next cutscene was triggered. The player is often
forced to solve nonsensical inventory puzzles for no reason at all; once you've completed the task it will turn out to be useless, but Nina refuses to move on
until you try it anyway.
Interface: Tunguska's game interface is standard for its genre but very well-done,
with screen exits you can double-click on to save travel time and a welcome feature that highlights hotspots on the screen to minimize pixel-hunting.
Ambience (Graphics, Sound, etc.): The graphics are very good and the
background music is suitable. Voice acting is mediocre. There's no appreciable mood conveyed by this game, and the lack of suspense is
disappointing for a mystery story.
Lora's Recommendations: I would recommend Tunguska only to people who are already fans of the graphic adventure genre--
the characterless feel and excessive linearity make this a bad entry point to graphic adventure games, but the lack of interface annoyances make it a quick and
smooth journey for adventure-game veterans who enjoy a casual inventory-recombining romp.
If You Loved Tunguska: Then you will probably love just about any graphic adventure game; there are dozens out
there in the same mold as Tunguska. If you haven't yet played The Longest Journey
or Syberia, those seem to be the two games Tunguska is most blatantly modeled on
(complete with in-game references to both of them), and both are excellent games with more originality than Tunguska to boot. If you liked the MacGyveresque
inventory puzzles then you're bound to enjoy Return to Mysterious Island, a castaway game
in which you can build everything from kites to weaponry out of various vines and twigs. Other adventure games you may enjoy include
The Black Mirror,
Nibiru, and
The Curse of Monkey Island.
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