Unlike Xplora1, Peter Gabriel's breakthrough 1994 CD-ROM, his latest creation is about neither Gabriel nor his Real World Records label. Eve, a multilayered gaming experience, explores the nature of relationships, with music as an integral part of the process. You don't just remix music or look in drawers; you immerse yourself in the erotic realms of love, sex, and romance.
Gabriel has crafted an impressive production, with high-end music mixed on the fly, high-speed scaling animation, and the gorgeous original art of Helen Chadwick, Yayoi Kusama, Cathy de Monchaux, and Nils-Udo. The CD-ROM begins - like life itself - with sperm and ovum. You fertilize the egg to enter the game and embark on a quest to reunite the first samplers of sin, Adam and Eve. Even more true to life, Eve has countless rules that no one explains and that change with unsettling frequency. Sounds, employed as clues throughout, signal whether you're headed in the right direction.
Traversing four worlds, each built around graphic art and a song written by Gabriel, you encounter rooms peopled by scientists and everyday folks. You advance by listening to their brief speeches. Using some of the items picked up along the way, you can remix Gabriel's songs. What's unusual - and enticing for fans - is the inclusion of previously unreleased instrumental and vocal tracks, so your mix can be wildly different from anything heard before.
The search to reunite Adam (often portrayed by Gabriel) with his other half moves from worlds of mud to foliage to industrial to postapocalypse in hit-and-miss fashion. Constant effort is required to find the buttons that take you somewhere. But for the visually rich design and the ability to hear and create different mixes of favorite Gabriel songs, it's a journey well worth taking.
##### Eve CD-ROM: US$39.95. Radio Real World: on the Web at www.realworld.on.net/eve.
STREET CRED
Breeding the MachineListen hear
Come Talk to Peter
