Review by: Brian Clair

Sacred Ground is the second installment of Activision’s Santa Fe Mysteries games created by Shannon Gilligan (mystery novelist) and Sam Egan (of Northern Exposure fame). The game puts you in the role of a rookie detective who has just gotten his first case – a kidnapping. Randa Tasker, wife of a rich land developer, has been kidnapped with very little evidence to point you in the right direction. You’ve only got 5 days to solve the mystery and the clock is ticking. Are you good enough to solve the puzzle?

Sacred Ground is a game which is one big interactive movie. Don’t worry, it’s not run off of Quicktime so there won’t be any of the standard nightmares there. The game is actually run off of lots of .avi’s and .wav files which run much smoother and with much higher video quality (I mean VERY high quality) than any other game I’ve seen using this technology. To help you in your investigation you’ve been given lots of help. The game provides you with a built-in PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) which allows you to receive e-mail, order forensics, take pictures, and store data. You also have a partner named John Night Sky who will conduct the interviews for you (although you get to direct where they go).

The main challenge in the game is to interview and investigate the right people that will give you the information you need to solve the mystery but like I said, the clock is ticking. You have only 5 days (each day has 8 hours) to solve the mystery and you only get one shot when you ask for a warrant. I played the game for about 4 hours the first time and made it to the end only to pick the wrong person (and lose). You have to not only get the right person, but you have to get all the facts right too to solve the murder.