House of Tales, 2004
The Moment of Silence is a futuristic outing in the New York City of 2044, where life has become extremely robotic and paper money is replaced by credits available in your Personal Messenger also used as a mobile phone and an ID device. In this point & click extravaganza you take up the role of Peter Wright, who has recently lost his wife and son in a plane crash. Peter works as a communication designer in a renowned advertising agency currently doing an anti-terrorism campaign called "Freedom of Speech" for the Government.
In the opening sequence a SWAT squad raids Peter's neighbour's apartment, which he peeks through the peephole and see them hauling his neighbour away leaving behind his wife and kid son. After they left you start the game and contact your neighbour's wife only to find out that your neighbour was a freelance news reporter and never committed any crime. Your curiosity increases when you come to know from the NYPD that there is no warrant ever issued in your neighbour's name -- Hmm... Then who were those people and why did they arrest George Oswald? Since you are eager to help the family in distress and also curious to find out the answers to these questions you decide to investigate the matter without having a slight idea that your investigation will plunge you into a dark and corrupt world of money-grubbing industrialist working under the control of some powerful alien being.
During your investigation you discover that somewhere in the beginning of the 21st century, the Government developed a super computerized network known as GlobalNet to eliminate every intellectual data ever written or published in form of books, magazines and even personal handwritten diaries by feeding them in the GlobalNet database. While computers connected to GlobalNet become an essential part of everyone's life, a select group of individuals gathered to fight against it, but they all either disappeared or died due to some unusual causes. But now it's your turn to free the world from the shackles of these moneymaking politicians, industrialist and also find out what happened to your neighbour, George Oswald?
The game has a superb and very compelling storyline with logical puzzles, which are mostly inventory based and most of these inventory items become available upon exchanging dialogues with game characters, which are annoyingly lengthy, but interesting and sometime funny. The game has many funny characters that develop the storyline as you interact with them. Graphics are extraordinarily astonishing and colorful, but slightly marred with a bit clumsy control. Speech and voice acting is top-notch though music is a bit annoying at few places. Overall, keeping in mind the superb qualities of "The Moment of Silence" I would highly recommend it to every serious adventure gamer.
