Site of the Month for @fwa is ‘Lexus Dark Ride‘ a video based micro site launching the new Lexus CT 200h.

The initial storyline is reminiscent of recent navigable video pieces appearing as fwa SOTD winners in the past few months.

The user wakes and is prompted to upload and image of their face or to connect via facebook.

One of the first things I noticed was a the ability to freelook around the FMV or Full Motion Video intros of the site.

Freelook within FMV sequences is a technique that emerged in first person shooters almost 2 decades ago and has been a common staple of most game intros and playable tutorials.

Unfortunately this technique and many others common to game intros are being redeployed in a quite lacklustre way in many of the sites featured on the fwa of late.

This technique is normally a way of adding an extra level of interaction to intros and game sequences, the dark ride version of this is quite poor with a very limited movement and depth of field.

That being said the site is highly stylised and the cars features and style are worked into each scene and shot, for example the choose your sound track section.

Throughout the piece I couldn’t help but feel like I was participating in an ad and I really think the moments when the ‘advertising’ was present really detracted from the engagement.

The first character you are introduced to is  Tony, your driver for the ‘mission’.

The man can only be described as a Git, and is too reminiscent of Danny Dyre for it to be a coincidence.

After a few scenes of car porn you are off on you ‘epic’ 12.5 minute journey to bring the new Lexus back to the boffins in the Lab.

The choices that appear throughout the site seem to have non linear outcomes, but I did not see any wild diversions as I navigated through the piece.

The story continues with a trip to a coffee shop, then a slight plot twist when Danny, sorry Tony, double crosses the Lexus team and allows the Die Hard 3 style bad guy to capture the new Model.

He then in true git style double crosses the  bad guys and you both escape to return to the Lexus Lab.

The experience ends, with a call to action to further explore the range, organise a test drive or share your video.

All in all I feel this is a good example of the new standard of FWA sites.

Much as I am a huge fan of the FWA and what they do, I feel this is one of the poorer SOTM choices, lacking the true creativity that I would associate with FWA winners of old.

Fingers crossed we will some more epic FWA sites of old in the coming months.