The biggest praise we can give Missing is that it isn't so much a game as an experience, and it's so well developed that at times you honestly believe you're trying to save some lives.

Jack Lorski is a journalist who works for SKL Network. He and a friend (Karen Gijman) were investigating a murder that was captured on a reel of old, undeveloped Super-8 film when they went "missing." Shortly after their disappearance, SKL received a cryptic CD-ROM from someone calling himself, "the Phoenix" who claims to have kidnapped both of them. Upon verifying the veracity of the CD, SKL sends it to you hoping you can find Jack and his friend before the Phoenix kills them.

What makes this adventure game unique is the immersion level that Nexis and The Adventure Company try to instill. The "game" CD is meant to be the CD sent by the Phoenix, and from the minute you install "the game" you're hunt for Jack and Karen begins. Missing requires that you be connected to the Internet to play the game, so you must have Internet access and a legitimate E-mail address. As you make your way through the investigation ("the game"), information is sent to the Nexis servers that then send E-mails to you from several different people - members of your investigative team, a psychiatrist, and SKL Network - that provide you with additional hints and clues. Herein lies the similarity between Missing and EA's game, Majestic. While you won't get phone calls, the E-mails you do receive feel like they're from real people. When we got out first few, it was with an almost apprehensive feeling of dread that tweaked the immersion level to an all-new high.

Full-motion video is used extensively throughout the game. I know that term probably leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but don't let it since it's cleverly interwoven into the storyline. So much so that we feel it's perhaps the single best use of the medium we've ever seen. The sequences are well acted, and although the audio is a bit distorted at times, it plays to the amateur/documentary feel of the story and thus fits perfectly. Through the course of the game you will have to analyze each segment of tape in hopes of deciphering who was on it, who was murdered, where it took place and who the murderers were... all that will eventually lead you to a discovery that honestly, could have been a little more interesting.

Puzzle solving is at the core of the game play experience. A few of them are clever, but most are just amazingly stupid and thus becomes the game's downfall. For instance, a few of the lamer puzzles have you moving a target around a table to knock parasites off; slinging a ball through a maze; moving a lit match through a dark room; avoiding holes that shoot out air; and making a roach-like insect turn dials by using the right combination of pills. However, the investigation oriented puzzles do make you feel like a real detective... too bad there weren't more of them. My favorites included piecing together celluloid snippets of the Super-8 movie in the right order so the movie would play back properly and memorizing a creepy nursery rhyme in order to play it back by selecting the right order of sounds. Unfortunately those were about the only puzzles in the entire game that I actually enjoyed.

The puzzles are fashioned to be a sort of "encryption" by the Phoenix, and as you solve them he reveals a bit more about his captives by showing you video clips Jack took during his investigation of the murder. The Phoenix attempts to make it a true cat and mouse game, toying with you along the way, ala the Brad Pitt Morgran Freeman movie, Seven. Great concept at heart when it works (like the puzzles), but executed rather poorly, and in the end the villain and his "game" become nothing more than B-movie clichs.

Another unique aspect of Missing is the amount of real-time Internet searching you have to do. Using Google (or whatever search engine you use) you will literally be scouring the Internet for hours to find clues. Lexis has created tons of very cool, custom designed websites just for the game that adds great depth and creates a truly captivating game environment. Unfortunately, herein lies another problem. This game was released months ago in Europe under the name, In Memoriam. When conducting your searches, more often then not you will run across lots of walkthroughs and answers to the game made by folks that have long since finished the game so be careful as you tread the Net.

In the end, Missing: Since January is a great concept that wasn't executed to its fullest potential. This is certainly one of the more unique and clever games to come out of The Adventure Company in quite some time, so they're on the right path if they wanted to continue developing games of this nature. It's certainly not a game for everyone. But if puzzles are your thing, or you just want to feel like Sherlock Holmes for a few hours, you could certainly do worse!