Sept 21, 2007

[Editor's note: This preview is littered with spoilers. If you haven't seen all three seasons of Lost just yet, you may be either, ahem, lost or you may stumble upon plot revelations you wish you didn't know - that is of course, if you're not all caught up. Get with it, already.]

If you jumped ship when Lost answered close to nothing in Season three, now would be a good time to get reacquainted with the castaways - by renting the boxset. There were more dodgy episodes than classic ones, particularly in the first half, but the show rallied in the run-up to the jaw-dropping series finale to produce some of the most exciting TV in recent years and set things up nicely for series four (flash-forwards? Genius!). However, you'll only need to have seen the first two series and a handful of series three episodes to grasp what's going on in the game.

That's "grasp" in the loosest sense of the word of course, because like the TV show the game isn't prepared to divulge the island's secrets or answer many of the questions it raises. If you're hoping it'll reveal everything about the DHARMA Initiative, the Hanso Foundation, the Others, and why we're supposed to be interested in boring Jack and root for him every week, then you're more delusional than a smacked-up Charlie.