Time Hollow (DS)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 5.5 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Carolyn Petit
• Reviewed on: 10/06/2008
• Released on: 09/23/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Time Hollow (DS) Review

Think of all the cool stuff you could do with a pen that was capable of opening a portal to the past. Would you write a note telling yourself what the Lotto numbers were this week? Warn yourself away from that disastrous blind date you went on? Send yourself the most hotly anticipated video games years before they hit shelves? Just such a time-ripping device is at the heart of the DS adventure Time Hollow, and it's a great concept around which to build a game for Nintendo's handheld. Unfortunately, that concept isn't enough to sustain this otherwise simplistic story-driven adventure.

You play as Ethan Kairos, a high school student with a seemingly ordinary existence. Like most families, his isn't without its problems; his cheapskate uncle frequently comes around to beg Ethan's dad for money, and what's worse, no matter how many times Ethan yells at his mom about it, she just never seasons her cooking enough! But on his 17th birthday, everything changes. Ethan wakes up to find that he has been transported into a world in which his parents disappeared 12 years ago. Only Ethan remembers living with them until the previous day; as far as everyone else is concerned, Ethan's uncle has taken care of him ever since his parents vanished. As if this wasn't odd enough, Ethan also finds a mysterious device called the hollow pen along with a note explaining that it's been passed down in his family for generations. As Ethan tries to come to grips with this new reality, time keeps shifting. And each time it shifts, it leaves Ethan with a few images in his head of memories from the new reality, which are memories of experiences he never had. Ethan soon realizes that, with the hollow pen, he can open holes in time and set right in the past things that are wrong in the present. All the while, he tries to figure out why things changed in the first place and what he needs to do to bring his parents back.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is not as engaging as the story. You tap on locations on the game's map screen to visit them; once you reach a location, it is displayed from a first-person perspective, and you interact with people or things by tapping on them. There's a very predictable rhythm to the action: You travel around town talking to people to discover the exact time and place of the moments Ethan glimpses in his flashback memories because these moments are the key to setting the present straight. Once Ethan has all the pieces in place, you can go to the location of the most crucial flashback and the hollow pen will start glowing. This means that Ethan can create a hole in the fabric of time between his moment and that moment in the past. This process is called digging, and it's the highlight of the game. With the stylus, you trace a circle on the touch screen; on the other side of the portal, you create the moment glimpsed in Ethan's flashback--frozen in time. Ethan then changes that moment, sometimes by sending something through the hole, such as a note he's written or an important item a character had misplaced, or by pulling something over to his side, such as an object that might be moments away from being used as a murder weapon. Once Ethan closes the hole, the present is immediately altered by the changes Ethan made to the past. Sometimes all is well, but frequently, Ethan finds that his solution solved one problem only to create another.

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