'Sentinel' a head-scratching adventure
By Marc Saltzman
Gannett News Service
 |  "Sentinel: Descendants of Time" is visually unique, allowing a player to move around freely in its world. |
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If you're a fan of the "Tomb Raider" series, the premise of "Sentinel: Descendants in Time" should sound familiar. You enter a dangerous cavern looking for treasure and unravel supernatural secrets of an ancient civilization in the process.
While "Tomb Raider" and "Sentinel" share similar stories, "Sentinel" looks and plays differently than the popular action games starring virtual vixen Lara Croft.
"Sentinel" is a much slower point-and-click adventure filled with head-scratching puzzles.
You play as Beni, a young explorer who enters the mysterious Tastan Caverns, a series of interconnected chambers and teleportation portals that lead to eight bizarre worlds.
Some believe the tombs contain priceless treasures while others claim that the civilization that created them left behind incredible technology.
At the start of the journey, you encounter a sentinel, a holographic image with artificial intelligence that was created to guard the Tastans' sacred caverns. She seems relatively harmless at first, but her presence grows stronger and more threatening as the sci-fi tale unfolds.
The game was written by award-winning Australian writer Terry Dowling, based on his short story, "The Ichneumon and the Dormeuse."
Similar to recent adventure games, such as "Myst IV Revelation" or "Return to Mysterious Island," you navigate this 3-D world from a first-person perspective and encounter obstacles that you overcome by solving puzzles.
"Sentinel" is visually unique, however, in that you can move around freely in this game world rather than take one step at a time as with most first-person adventure titles. The game even shares the same key presses as 3-D shooters such as "Halo" or "Half-Life 2," in which you use the W, A and D keys to walk around.
Puzzles usually involve taking note of environmental clues and then manipulating a contraption by pressing the correct buttons, pulling specific levers, turning dials or playing correct music notes. These conundrums can be quite tough, but a built-in help system offers hints for solving the game's more than 20 puzzles.
How challenging are the game's riddles? In one instance, you must figure out how to manipulate the controls for a beam of light that emanates from an ancient lighthouse so it shines in the correct order on five purple plants. This, in turn, powers an elevator that you need to use to get to the top of a mountain.
While this puzzle sounds challenging, it's too similar to others in the game, so you might begin to feel a sense of deja vu after a while. It's too bad that the title's Polish developer didn't introduce other game-play elements such as an inventory system, so that items could be found, combined and used when needed. Instead, the game is mostly about playing with weird machines.
"Sentinel" also makes you backtrack to earlier levels of the game to complete later puzzles, which is unnecessarily time-consuming.
Shortcomings aside, PC gamers in search of a challenging adventure shouldn't be disappointed with "Sentinel: Descendants in Time," especially given the sub-$20 price tag.
