One can argue that Space Ace and Dragon's Lair were the first full-motion video games. It can also be argued that while that may be applicable for the arcades, the home market didn't get such a thing until manufacturers started to toy around with the idea of placing games on the new CD format. Titles like Ground Zero: Texas, Night Trap and Sewer Shark embraced the idea of using footage of actors as the main selling point, but the technology wasn't really ready for it at the time. Bad acting, simplistic gameplay and early grainy video were enough for players to actively shun the idea, relegating it to a footnote of the industry's growing pains . There seems to be nostalgia for it, though, as the people at Zandel Media have tried to bring that type of game back via an episodic format in Missing: An Interactive Thriller.

The game starts off with a man named David shackled in the dank basement of an undisclosed building. After getting to his feet, he tries to shout for help only to realize that there's no one out there to hear his cries. The only thing he can see is writing on a door asking him to play a game. Meanwhile, a detective has been called to the scene to investigate David's last known location before his disappearance. While the detective tries to figure out where David is, the trapped man's objective is to escape alive.

Immediately, Missing gives you a vibe similar to the first "Saw" film, minus the gore and cursing. There's a sense of unease to the situation since it is never revealed who put David in this predicament. The episode provides some clues about why this was done, but there's enough untold backstory that you can't tell if the reasoning is justified in a twisted way. David's scenes intrigue the player about where this is all going, a good contrast to the detective's scenes that just let you know this isn't the first occurrence of such a crime.

Aside from the use of full-screen motion video, Missing is a standard point-and-click adventure title. The game slows down to let you know that interactive portions are coming, and the changes to the mouse cursor easily let you know which interactions you should be expecting. Although there's no option to highlight hotspots, the areas are large enough that you can easily tell what should and shouldn't be clicked just by panning around. The puzzles aren't out of the ordinary, and clues are abundant in the environment as long as you're observant. Though the game uses slide puzzles twice, they aren't too difficult to solve, and that goes for the rest of the switch and item puzzles. In fact, unless you're new to the genre, only one puzzle will give you any trouble, and that's due to trial and error and perspective more than anything else.

The game also features interaction by way of Quick Time Events, the mechanic that many older full-motion video games relied heavily on. This time around, the mechanic does away with trial and error and goes for very visible prompts, immediately letting you know the result of the action once you initiate it. The actions are also simple to execute, since all you need to do is click on the highlighted spot, and you have a generous amount of time to get it right. Despite all of that, there are some that will still dislike this mechanic, but luckily for them, it doesn't appear that much in the episode.

For those wondering about the presentation, the game delivers on this front. With the exception of a few instances when the game zooms in on parts of the video and exposes some artifacting, the video is clean and in high definition, lending to the movie feel that developers sought all those years ago. Better yet, the acting is quite good, though you can only judge that on actions since so few lines are spoken throughout the episode. Meanwhile, the score matches the scenarios quite well, effortlessly giving you that crime show feel. If it weren't for the interactive portions, you could easily mistake this for a currently running TV show.

Really, the only knock against the title at the moment is how short it is. Unless you're absolutely stumped at things like word finding exercises and sliding tile puzzles, Missing takes less than an hour to complete. It may take a little more to complete the Achievements, but that isn't very difficult, either. Other adventure games certainly offer more gameplay for the price, especially when looking at the Telltale games, but the developers have stated that future episodes will be longer.

So far, Missing: An Interactive Thriller shows promise. The puzzles might not be mind-bending, but they display a bit of toughness while the presentation is rather top-notch, good enough to break the stigma of bad acting that was previously associated with the genre. The length does hurt it, but the story is intriguing enough to make you want to see where it goes. Until that happens, consider this a cautious recommendation.

Score: 7.0/10