WANTED: One black-belt level computer geek to help decipher McDonald's Olympic tie-in promotion. Knowledge of mythology, numerology, and Esperanto essential. Single-minded obsessive streak I'd love to tell you I'm kidding, but I'm not. After several attempts to understand The Lost Ring, the aforementioned McD's promotional video game, I feel like somebody's been beating me on the head with a small pillow for the better part of an afternoon.
The Lost Ring is an "alternate reality game," which means it's an impossibly complicated contest designed for people who actually wish they were stranded on the island from "Lost," running from the Others and the Dharma Initiative. Except this time, instead of plane crash survivors, the characters are (so far as I can tell) ancient Olympic athletes who found themselves blinked into the middle of cornfields dressed in modern athletic gear, with cryptic tattoos on their forearms.
Of course the tattoos are in Esperanto. What were you expecting? And, since mysterious numbers are so important on "Lost," they're a big part of The Lost Ring, too. But this is more than just a "Lost" ripoff, right?
