9

"Nine" Is perhaps the greatest success the video gaming community has ever brought forth. A big budget, star-packed vehicle, it is visually stunning, enriched with great acting and plot driving scenes, and the most challenging puzzles you'll encounter. The game's premise is thus: your uncle, Thurston Last (Christopher Reeve,) has left you his hotel in his will. The hotel, called The Last Resort, is created on a well of cosmic energy and was built to house creative talents from across the universe who are seeking their Muse. However, it has been taken over by two alien entities called The Toxic Twins (Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith.) The resort has, in essence, been laid to waste, and it is your job, through a series of very elaborate puzzles, clues and twists, to bring the place back to life. You do so by finding the missing pieces needed to assemble what is called "The Muse Machine." This is not a moron's game. Although some of the puzzles along the way are simple enough to figure out, the overall puzzle in the game (which involves translating, then retranslating, then RE-RE-translating various items of sheet music through archaic codes and then playing chords on an organ) are incredibly difficult. The whole game revolves around music, and is very artistic in it's presentation. (The whole mansion has an folk-art feeling.) Even Cher stops by for an appearance as one of the muses, a spiritually animated (if somethies annoying) fortune telling machine named Isadora. In all the game is spellbinding, and it seems the worlds of video games and Hollywood have finally found their niche. Sad, then, that I discovered this game lying in a bin full of about 1,000 copies at a dollar store.