Sign of the Sun

Review by Lakerz
October 2003

I learned about Sign of the Sun a few years back while surfing the web and was intrigued because I couldn't find a review for it. Developed by Project 2 Interactive, which is better known for producing adventure titles (Liath and Reah), I knew I wouldn't be content until I hunted down a copy. Living in the USA, this was easier said than done, as SOS was never distributed here. I finally tracked it down, but was it worth the search?

Sign of the Sun casts the player as James Mariner, mankind's hopeful savior. Nuclear disaster has ravaged the earth to the point where its solar orbit is off kilter. With temperatures rising and radiation becoming threatening, Earth's population is desperate for an answer. A metal ore called Morium is discovered, which looks to be a promising breakthrough for protection against the heat and radiation. The only drawback is the testing required to be sure of Morium's qualities would take too long on Earth. The leaders decide that the only way to do this testing quickly is to venture off into space and take the measurements on the sun. Thus, James Mariner blasts off in the Firefly, an experimental craft, and deploys a Morium probe within the sun's corona as the ultimate test of the ore's viability. Things, of course, don't go as planned, and when the game starts, James finds himself on land, but where?

My copy of SOS came on one CD-ROM and may be played in English, Dutch, French, Spanish, or Italian. The box also contains an oversized manual with instructions translated into those languages. Sign of the Sun is a DOS game, so I turned to my trusty Pentium 1 Win95 box with DOS 6.22 for installation. I also was successful in installing the game on a Win98 computer. The installation was painless although time-consuming—it took around 30 minutes to copy files. Once I set up my sound card, I was primed for liftoff! After the intro ended however, I was quickly grounded by the clunky control scheme. SOS is a keyboard-controlled game, with the arrow keys moving the character around the screen and other number pad keys tied to different actions. Sign of the Sun offers the opportunity to map the various character actions to any key, but I stuck with the defaults. Luckily, a mouse can also be used to control the game. A left-click on the screen and the character walks to that spot. Left-clicking on objects will pick them up or operate them if possible, while a right-click will show a description. Even using the mouse, though, you must position the character near an item to interact with it. The only part of the game where the mouse can't be used is for combat. What, you say? Combat? Unfortunately, yes.

In a lamentable design move, combat plays an important role in SOS. It appears the Firons (your primary foe) are not very peace-loving, as they follow you throughout the game either trying to capture you or kill you. Using your fists, feet, and the occasional weapon to defend yourself is necessary to make any progress. To make matters worse, positioning the character to score a hit on an enemy was a constant source of frustration to me. Many times I thought I had it perfect only to see my fist go right through the enemy. Of course, enemies had no such problem smacking me around whenever they wanted! A health meter of sorts (shown by a hand with a colored dot in the middle) gives a vague clue to how the character is feeling, as does an occasional "I don't feel too well" voice line from James Mariner. Too many hits and you crumple to the ground, game over. Thus, saving early and saving often is advisable. The main menu for saving/loading/options is accessible with one press of the Esc key. Sign of the Sun allows 10 save slots, which, given the aforementioned combat problems, were not enough for me.

I found SOS underwhelming graphically. The details in the screens are bland, the colors not varied enough. SOS is a sizable game (over 150 screens, according to the back of the box), so there is quite a bit of variety in locations. It's just that within each location, there is a "sameness" to the screens that nagged at me, with very few exceptions. There were plenty of adventure games released during the mid-90s that were more impressive in the graphics department.

As far as the music, well ... there isn't much. The only moments during the game when music plays are during the opening and ending cutscenes, and that music is forgettable. Sound effects work well and add to the atmosphere of the game world, but the voice acting is a mess. I literally cringed every time a conversation started because every voice actor thought his or hers was the most important voice role in the game and therefore overacted to the fullest extent. At least Project 2 Interactive had the foresight to let the player skip over dialogue with a press of the space bar. Luckily, the protagonist's voice is bearable, as is the voice of a computer A.I., Pam, with whom you are in constant contact.

The puzzles are predominantly inventory-based. I'd classify the adventure part of SOS as semi-easy overall; I breezed through the first two-thirds of the game without breaking a sweat. There are a few tricky puzzles near the end (at least to me). Unlike other adventure games, SOS doesn't burden you with a zillion inventory items to puzzle over. Only at the end of the game did I have a large enough inventory that I had to scroll through more than one screen to see it all. Inventory items that are no longer needed are usually discarded. The one aspect that made a few of the puzzles needlessly difficult was the fact that I had to position the character just right to use an inventory item on something. A half-inch off and no luck. Frustrating, to say the least!

I really wanted to like Sign of the Sun, but there were just too many elements that went wrong. From the long load times to the mostly bland graphics and bad voice acting and the clunky controls, I had a hard time getting immersed in the game's world. Add in all of the frustrating combat, and I was almost relieved to see the end cutscene even though it didn't tie up the story well. In fact, the story throughout the game was confusing. I never really knew all that was going on, instead just moving from scene to scene. This is one of those games that is thoroughly mediocre in every way. SOS indeed. 

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Project 2 Interactive
Producer: ICE
Release Date: 1997

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System Requirements

486 DX 66 (P120 or higher recommended)
4X CD drive (8X recommended)
16 MB RAM
1 MB video card
Soundblaster compatible sound card
120 MB disk space

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