The Moment of Silence: A Brief Glimpse Into the Future Company: The Adventure Company Set in 2044 in an information rich New York, The Moment of Silence takes a lot of the elements found in most point-and-click adventure games and adds government conspiracies, aliens cover ups, cool gadgets, and a missing person into the mix. Peter Wright is an employee for a local Tele-Com agency. One day (soon after moving into a new apartment complex) he witnesses a SWAT team break into his neighbor?s apartment and drag out the father of the family. Peter feels compelled to find out what happened. Soon he finds out that the police disavow any knowledge of the raid, and he begins to suspect that the kidnapping of the man (a local freelance e-reporter) might be more than a case of mistaken identity. In order to solve this mystery, Peter investigates Downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn Park, and the Lower East Side (and probably more, but those are the only locations mentioned in the demo). He meets up with a crazed former physicist, a deaf guitarist, a conspiracy nut who believes aliens are controlling people?s thoughts through the web, prostitutes, and anyone else Peter can find to talk to. The environments found in The Moment of Silence show the near future with a look and feel that reminded me of ?Blade Runner.? Though the game doesn?t seem to boast spinners and confused androids, the attitude of the residents and the appearance of the streets still make the connection apparent. When I first played the The Moment of Silence demo, I was a little disheartened by the less than stellar pathfinding and choppy speech. For example, when in Peter?s apartment, if you are standing next to the computer, if you click on the screen to use the system, he walks halfway across the room, turns around, and then walks back. As for the speech problems, it seemed like the character was doing a bad William Shatner impression most of the time. It got just a little annoying. Thankfully, I found the story and unusual puzzles enjoyable enough to keep me from focusing on these small issues too much. Again, this is only a preview, so perhaps these problems will be addressed in the final product. Moment of Silence had a lot of gimmicks that give this game a lot of potential. There were several occasions when it seemed to poke fun of the technology of today. Throughout the demo, there were gadgets and computers that were advanced, but not so much that they seemed implausible. There is one point in the game where Peter refers to an old computer with a 3GHz ?Panthion IV? processor that looked like one his father had and wasn?t really useful for more than pirating, not to mention another computer in the same room that appeared to have an ATI Radeon graphics card for a motherboard. These little events made the demo more enjoyable and hopefully the rest of the game will be filled with even more. If The Moment of Silence can smooth out a few of it?s rough edges before the launch time, then it could turn out to be one clean and entertaining game. -J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer Related Links: The Moment of Silence Homepage