Review by: Brandon "Cold Day" Cackowski-Schnell

Poor, poor Eike. While traveling around some nondescript European town, Eike is stabbed to death. Then he's shot. Then he's run over with a car. Wait, or was he stabbed, then bludgeoned, then poisoned, then run over with the car? With so many deaths, it's hard to keep them all straight, but one thing is clear: people really don't like Eike and it's up to you to stop them with whatever convoluted time traveling shenanigans you have at your disposal.

If you think the game sounds vaguely like a PS2 adventure game released almost ten years ago, well it's not vaguely like it, it is exactly it. What brought on the game's resurrection is anyone's guess but ten years hasn't done this game any favors, especially in the visuals department. The game is set in the same town with only a sepia wash or black and white filter used to let you know that you've traveled to different time periods. What remain unchanged as you prance about the timestream are the sometimes strange, sometimes downright horrific character models. Eike doesn't look too bad except for looking like a Ken doll with his smooth, shiny features. Other characters don't fare so well including one resident seemingly spawned from the town's clandestine, human-pig interbreeding program.

The game is divided up into different chapters with each chapter opening with Eike's death. Upon coming back to life via the help of Homonculus, a shadowy figure with a penchant for speeches and billowing pants, Eike will have varying amounts of in game time to stop his murder which is where all of the time traveling comes in. Unfortunately the simplest answer of traveling back ten minutes before you're about to be killed and smacking the killer upside the head isn't available. Instead you have to make convoluted trips back as far as the 1500s to make things right. Is your killer hiding behind a tree? Well, travel back in time and prevent the tree from being planted. Of course, this being an adventure game even a task as simple as that can't be simply carried out so you'll do the requisite item hunting and item showing to get the right people to do the right things. It's as tedious a trope as it has ever been but at least the game gives you credit in terms of percentage of the level complete for every time you show a townie your collection of futuristic geegaws.

What doesn't help in your pursuit of self preservation is the long, boring cut scenes where various characters will drone on and on to Eike while the clock ticks down to Eike's many, many deaths. Cut scenes take up game time so if you spend too much time running around trying to figure out what to do only to finally figure it out and then get launches into a ten minute soliloquy on destiny, well hope you like dirt sonny cause you're about to be sleeping in it. Luckily you can just start the chapter all over again and beat feet right to the solution, and skip the cut scenes but it's still frustrating not to be able to tell your companions that they need to stuff a sock in it because 500 years hence you've got a date with a car fender that you're trying to avoid. It certainly doesn't help that these speeches aren't written with any ear for the time period you've traveled to. I'm no historian but I'm pretty sure no one in 16th century Europe ever said "Tough luck, sis."

To reward you for all of your efforts there are five different endings you can unlock as well as an additional chapter should you score a high enough percentage on the individual chapters. Some of the endings are good, some aren't, one is absolutely hilarious given everything you just spent hours trying to avoid, but in the end, none are satisfying enough to make you feel like all of the time jumping back and forth through time were worth it. It doesn't help that Eike isn't doing all of this to save the world or anything similarly grandiose. He's just trying to save his own skin and he's not endearing enough of a character to make that a sufficient motivation. Unfortunately the game's premise, mechanics or characters don't help either as they aren't interesting enough to make you overcome any indifference you feel towards Eike's plight. In the end, what ultimately does Eike in is apathy.