A flat, cookie cutter experience that just goes through the motions.
With such rich fodder for an interesting story, I expected Nibiru to deliver an engaging, interesting plot. The beginning of the story seems promising – Martin Nolan is called out of the drudgery of his everyday routine to undertake a mission that starts out with intrigue – a missed rendezvous with a mysterious contact, hidden notes, and a murder all unfold in the first few minutes of the game, setting the stage for what could be a gripping plot. Instead, the game quickly collapses into a flat, unentertaining tale. Much of the exposition comes in lengthy, boring dialogues rather than through gameplay itself, adding to the feeling that you're just pushing buttons until someone tells you more.
This is indicative of one of the game's weakest areas: the puzzle play. The puzzles range from eye-rollingly easy to somewhat challenging, and rarely integrate into the story well (if at all). Almost every puzzle feels as its sole raison d'etre is to stretch the game out as long as possible. There is a boatload of what I call "gopher" game play; you won't be able to get information or assistance out of anyone unless you run errands for them. Get a pack of cigarettes for a bum, or help a bouncer hook up with his girlfriend (which involves a few more layers of errands first). This could be more fun (and challenging) if you actually had to put any thought into this. Instead, the characters will tell you exactly what they want, and usually exactly how to get it, so you just have to go through the motions to get it done. Evidently, even the developers realized the silly amount of errand-running involved – at one point, even the main character laments the ridiculous nature of the multilayered bouncer/girlfriend "puzzle".
A major weakness in the gameplay comes from the game's design itself. A scattering of random items are available in each scene to examine, a vast majority of which are completely useless. Once you've examined a useless item, its hotspot will disappear. Promising in theory, but due to the illogical nature of the game, this leaves you scanning the screen repeatedly to figure out which items have been de-activated, and which may actually have some use. The game is also rigidly linear – you won't be able to do things or pick things up until the very moment you need to, and these moments are often triggered by repeated conversations with another character. This could also be acceptable, if it weren't for the way the game was written. Once you've exhausted all conversation topics with someone, Martin will say something along the lines of "We have nothing to talk about". Traipse around some more, click on some random hotspot, and suddenly he'll have something else to talk about – but you only know this by trying again out of sheer frustration. With no logical indication that clicking on some item might have opened up a new line of dialogue, this can leave you wandering aimlessly until you finally try again out of sheer frustration. So, to sum up a large portion of the gameplay: talk to someone repeatedly, examine everything, talk to that person repeatedly again, examine everything… lather, rinse, repeat. (Shampooing your hair is more fun, by the way.)
This is made even worse by the fact that conversations are needlessly long and wordy. You'll sit through minutes of conversation that have absolutely no value, for no reason other than to advance to the next portion of the game. While the voice acting is passable (even from the clearly Canadian voice actor that portrays the Eastern European Martin), the poor material makes it hard to take anything anyone says very seriously.
I could fill this entire review with complaints about the gameplay, but I'll simply say this: illogical, errand-running puzzles, linear gameplay, pixel hunting drudgery and ridiculous simplicity are all present in abundance here. With most of your required actions clearly dictated to you, there's little solving and a lot of fetching involved.
Technically speaking, the game fares a little better. The graphics look pretty good, though a bit lifeless. One street in Paris has any sort of background action; unfortunately, it's in the form of the same woman walking the same loop repeatedly. There's nothing really beautiful, striking or memorable to look at, and the environments rarely add much to the feel of the game.
As mentioned, the voice acting is passable, and at times almost good, especially for an adventure game. The problem is, there is just so much of it. The music is unremarkable, but acceptable. A few dramatic clues will give you the heads up that something interesting is about to happen, and a scattering of ambient noise attempt to breathe life into otherwise boring scenery.
I played through the game because I wanted so much to like it, but I found very little to enjoy. In the end, I felt as if I just been clicking my mouse a lot for a few hours so that I could get on with my life. It may be Nazi/Alien/Mayan-free, but at least it's interesting.