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Don't let the packaging fool you!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 75 / 76
Date: May 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

An old Ross Perot quote pretty much sums up this game: "You're going to hear a giant sucking noise" as you play this game. Whoo, baby, does this game stink! I thought that 'The Crystal Key II' (another recent Dreamcatcher/Adventure Company game) was pretty awful, but I did not know there was a whole other level of bad below that! Holy cow, how does dreck like this manage to get published with such flashy and professional packaging and marketing?

Jeez, where to start? How about with the incredibly bad interface. The game is a standard point-and-click adventure game where you navigate from point to point and then pan around in 360 degree views. Panning requires you to hold down the left mouse button while dragging the mouse in the direction you want to pan. What is so awful about this interface is that when you have dragged your mouse the entire width of your mousepad, you have only panned about one quarter of way around the view. You then have to lift and reposition your mouse to drag it some more in the direction you are panning! Most games have an option to correct this by letting you set the mouse sensitivity to a speed that you (and your video card) are comfortable with. Is that option available here? NO! Can you pan with your keyboard instead? NO! As a matter of fact there are absolutely NO games options whatsoever! You are stuck with one panning rate, one music volume, one dialog volume (a real shame since the dialog is putrid), and...you get the picture.

Getting an item into your inventory is pretty easy (just click on it), but getting it out is absolutely painful. You first have to click on a screen icon to pull up your inventory list, click on an item to see a larger view of it in the middle of your screen, click on that large image to change your cursor into a representation of that item, and then click on the exit button of the inventory screen. Finally you then have to click on the game spot where you think the item might be useful. Unfortunately, you typically have no clue as to what might work at a specific hot spot, so you end up trying EVERYTHING in your inventory to see if something works (and there is a lot of junk in there sometimes)!

The puzzles of the game are a joke. As a matter of fact, the very first two puzzles you encounter are pretty much the same thing: try to find the correct sequence of clicks to get all the way through the puzzle; if you guess wrong, start over! They don't get much more imaginative beyond that. My game came with a "limited edition" game strategy guide included free. I'm guessing that all of them will come with this guide because, otherwise, nobody will be able to (nor want to) finish this embarrassment.

As a final insult, the developers thought they would try to spice up their incoherent game by adding a lot of humor. Done well, humor can add a very entertaining aspect to an adventure game. The classic Zork games are excellent examples. When done badly, as in this case, it just becomes irritating to the point of distraction. Most of it is just not funny (okay, maybe to a six year old) and does not "fit" in the atmosphere of this game. Jive talking jungle natives? Please.

Again, like Crystal Key II, this looks like the work of an independent game developer who has spent years putting together a workable game using "knives and bearskins". If so, I would have admired the work and enjoyed the game for what it was. Unfortunately, this game was, again, developed by what looks to be a large team (Hexagon). Games like these give the game genre, which I love the most, a huge black eye and are probably the reason why so many people get turned off by adventure games. What a shame, because there are some really good ones out there. Unfortunately, you have to dig through a lot of dung like this to find it. Avoid this game.

Quirky fun, if you have the patience

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 36 / 39
Date: April 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

A strange little game, this. There's evidence of a delightfully fun personality behind the writing. I found myself laughing out loud more than once when the Flaming Mask guy suddenly demanded to have his nose scratched in the middle of prophesying the planet's doom.

On the other hand, the basic plot is never explained sufficiently for the average player to figure out just what the HECK is going on. The game comes with a step-by-step walkthrough, and that's a good thing, because many of the puzzles are only solved by doing completely unrelated things. I resent this -- there ought to be some sort of internal logic that allows the persistent user to actually *solve* a problem occasionally instead of just tripping over the solution because you threw everything in your inventory at it.

It also needs to be said that the game is buggy. The game's forum shows that everyone else had the same problem I did -- inexplicable freezes that require you to reboot to get out of the game.

But problems aside, the game's sense of humor makes up for a lot. I played, laughed, got frozen, cursed heartily, rebooted, and went back to playing. But if you have blood pressure problems, perhaps you might want to think this one over carefully.

Writing that makes you wish you were in Soviet Russia

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 21
Date: April 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Oh man, where do I begin? First of all, I have never written an amazon review. Reason being that I am usually pretty indifferent, or i should say on the level and feel that the customer can choose for him or herself without listening to my opinion which is many time different from theirs anyway. However, this game was so utterly and painfully terrible that I feel it my duty .... no, my crusade, my jihad, my mission and my ka to warn anyone, ANYONE no matter your usual preference of games to avoid this embarressmet at all costs. Do not take this game even if someone offers YOU 20 bucks to take it off their hands. This curse, this abomination may quiet possibly signal the doom of mankind and any further intelligent thinking on the part of mankind. The writing is terrible on such a level that I felt sick listening to the dialog .... which is impossible to turn down other than adjusting you own speaker volume because this game offers absolutely no game options what so ever. I am one of the few people who still love playing adventure games and i state this so no one gets the imppression that i am a first person shooter who's first forray into adventure gaming was this. I play adventure games for story, writing and thinking .... this monstrosity of a game gets a F in every category. I'm serious, do not waste your money on this game, do not waste your time or even 2-3 days of your life on this game .... go outside and feed bread crumbs to ducks or drill an enormous hole straight through your eyeball, just do not play this game. It is a curse that will stay with you. After witnessing this you will never ever buy an adventure again without first reading 30 reviews at least. After playing this game, which i might add I did not have the stomach to complete, I now no longer believe that mankind as a whole is evolving upwards toward some form of perfection. I now believe that we are de-volving at an unparrelled rate and that soon we will be swinging from trees again or living in caves drawing stick figures of deer and bears and such and calling those stick figures works of unriveled artistry. Please, unless you are considering all the pros of tolitarian censorship, then avoid this game as if it were a rampaging rabid grizzley in heat.

Save your money unless they come out with a patch

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 22 / 23
Date: August 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game has done nothing but misbehave. First it did not want to load my saved game so I started over again. Second time around it was OK. Then the game blacked out on me at the same point every time, I uninstalled and installed again but the same thing kept happening. The Adventure Company has no on-line help, you have to e-mail them. I could not find a patch either. I am probably going to e-mail them to see what happens but basically I have written it off. I have all the requirements needed according to the box(XP etc.).

The little I played was disappointing and very confusing, the best thing they could do was to give a solution guide along so you can check if you are really just confused or does the game go somewhere?? I never got past the 2nd chapter so who knows?? Graphics are very cartoon like but then I am used to Myst, Syberia and other top of the line games. I could live with that if other features would make up for it, but that is not the case.

Dreadful

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 21
Date: August 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Had a heck of a time trying to run it on XP which only added to the unavoidable realization that this "adventure game" is a complete waste of a person's time and energy. I couldn't tell you much in the way of storyline because my computer would freeze up every 10 sec. I gave up trying to go past the 1st chapter. Who needs this aggravation. Root canal is more pleasant.

My Kind of Exploring

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 20
Date: July 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is not for people who like shooters or blowing things up. You can easily get lost in the jungle for a while if you don't keep track of where you have been. Then there are the 6 doors that all look the same. They have a beautiful butterfly pattern on them, but you have to keep track of which door goes to which room. I really like this kind of exploring. I haven't scene a game like this in years. Once you find your way around, then you have to have found the right inventory items and figure out where you need to use them. Some of these are hilarious. You are in for some surprises. Then you can also explore areas out of sequence which adds to the confusion. There are doors in the middle of nowhere that are dimensional portals. Let alone you keep looking for the same guy, well, at least he kind of looks like the same guy. Actually the Doc is different versions of himself in past lives. These can be funny too. One time he is in a gorilla suit, then he looks like a sailor from a corporate office and then he is locked up in something - but I don't want to give that away. If you like taking your time trying to figure out a whacky world this is the one.

Great for kids

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: June 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I was so pleased to see an adventure game that kids can play and it really delivers something for them. You don't need to explain some complicated logic (or illogic) to get through the puzzles. They also don't need to go through multiple speeches to get clues or get bored by them. So many games have checklists of prerecorded dialog you have to go through. This one has movies of the characters and they deliver their lines like a reward when you solve something and can move on to the next part.

The locations are also unusual and you can jump between them through doorways that cross dimensions. So you don't have to play the game in a linear progression. You can jump around and explore which is what the best adventure games should let you do. There is also no pressure or time limit on what you do either. You don't have to master keyboard commands while you are trying to find your way in a maze as a clock ticks down - not this game. There is a gentle and funny side to the experience. That is another thing that has been missing for a long time. There is humor here and some of it will make you laugh out loud.

FW has wonderful images and the animation scenes are beautiful. And I have never flown around on a bee or climbed a mountain on the back of a giant lizard before. You will want to watch these scenes over and over. You are trying to locate Doc Maitland in all his different incarnations of past lives, accompanied by a talking lizard who sits on your shoulder and talks to you during the game. He is wonderful when you see him in closeups. There is a lot of story there but only if you want to check it out. You don't have to if you don't want to. The music was OK, but there wasn't a lot of it, which is OK too. The ending is a big payoff scene and even has the cliche sunset, but I really, really liked it all the same. There is great replay value here. I really do recommend this one especially to families.

Awful! Why didn't I read these reviews before purchasing?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: July 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I honestly don't know why I didn't look at these reviews before I purchased this game. I don't know the technical terms -- (interface?) but simply moving through the game is excruciatingly difficult, and the screen goes to black and you suddenly appear someplace new -- you can't actually see yourself "move." I am a huge fan of Nancy Drew PC games and Syberia I and II. Not only are they fascinating, but it's easy to move through the game -- you don't even think about it. This was a huge struggle, no fun at all, and I was very happy to give up on it.

Corny and made little sense to me

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: February 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game was just bizzare. I rarely laughed at the corny humor that saturates the gameplay--I usually rolled my eyes. I thought the navigation was illogical and frustrating as well. This is one of those games that I forced myself to finish, and was glad when it was over. Still, it had enough challenge in it to keep me going, so it wasn't a total waste. I've definitely played worse games (like Conspiracies).

Get Real

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: July 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have seen some of the other reviews that talk about the 360 lookaround ability in this game. I have been playing games with this kind of lookaround for years and I love being able to to look and zoom in or zoom out (if you haven't noticed you can do that in FW). The old alternative was the static slide show which I never liked in the first place. As far as FW gameplay goes, I loved this game and it's fresh content. The puzzles were totally new and original. The graphics were first rate and the animations were excellent. All in all, a great game. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because I would have liked more animations and more story details. The story is great and original too, but they don't give you enough. You have to read the guide, which I really didn't want to do. I eventually read it by the time I was getting near the end, but I prefer to not read stuff when it comes to games. I just want to play. If I wanted to read I'd go to the library. FW still is full of unusual visuals and the unexpected though. So that goes a long way.

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