The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time Review: Time Travel, Aliens, and Historical Accuracy

This is the third of five reviews detailing games that defined my early childhood.

Developer: Presto Studios
Publisher: Red Orb Entertainment
Version Reviewed: The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time for Windows 98
Price: $5.99
Released: January 31st, 1998

The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time is one of my favorite games of all time. I had played the other two games in the series and I didn't really like them. I didn't hate them and the writing was really good, but they suffered from problems that plagued early adventure games like overly complicated interfaces and a over abundance of failure states. Luckily, they fixed all the problems I had with the first two games and kept everything I liked in this one. I could just end the review here and tell you to go check it out, but let's dive a little deeper into why I love this game so much shall we.

Atlantis is inspired by Minoan Civilization of Crete.

You play as Gage Blackwood, Agent 5 of the Temporal Security Agency whose job it is prevent criminals that have gotten their hands on time travel technology from changing history. After preventing the assassination of peaceful alien ambassador and stopping a rouge time traveler from framing you for tampering with history, Gage most now travel back through time once more to find the pieces of an ancient alien legacy so that he can help stop an evil alien race from destroying Earth in the present. Along for the ride is artificial intelligence Arthur, who endearing sense of humor and wonderfully written dialogue has made him one of my personal favorite characters.

El Dorado takes inspiration from the Nazca Civilization of the Andes Mountains.

One of my absolute favorite things about this game is how the developers of this game are able to create a believable world in spite of the subject matter they are working with. I can only wonder what a lessor writer would have come up with when confronted with a plot line that involves time traveling to El Dorado, Atlantis, and Shangri-la just before they are destroyed by aliens to collect the piece of an ancient legacy thing. They could have depicted these locations as super advanced utopias, but instead Presto Studios decided to be as historically accurate as possible. They created versions of these legendary places that feel ground in reality and historically plausible, I found it easy to suspend by disbelief in spite of some of the crazier ideas that you can sometimes come across because of this extra effort on the behalf of the developers.

Shangri-la takes inspiration from Tibetan Buddhist culture.

On the gameplay side of things The Journeyman Project 3 is your standard adventure game. You go around finding items and using those items to solve puzzle to progress the story. But The Journeyman Project set itself apart by letting the player warp between three different time periods each with different kinds of puzzles. Some puzzles would even require the use of items found in other time periods. Another interesting mechanic is the use of a disguise system that allowed you to capture the likeness of people you met in time periods and assume their identities. This allowed for some interesting exploration opportunities to see how characters would react to each other. The puzzles also did a great job of not falling into that bizarre logic that plagues other adventure games, with the glaring exception of the last puzzle. But for the most part the puzzles are well designed and even if you get stuck Arthur can always point you in the right direction if you want him to.

Shangri-la is my personal favorite area of the game.

On the technical side of things The Journeyman Project 3 is a standard point and click adventure game. You traverse lovingly detailed 3D environments with characters being played by real actors in a FMV style. It has aged rather well and is still fun to play through today, though some of the actors are hilariously bad which doesn't bother me any since they are entertaining as hell regardless. Sadly, The Journeyman Project 3 has a lot of issues running on current computers. You will need an emulator to play this game and even though there's a version available on Good Old Games it currently can't work on Windows 8.

Pro-tip: The end goal of each area is to uncover the secret of the temples that dominate them. 

But if you can get past those technical issues I highly recommend checking this game out. The Journeyman Project 3 is a game near and dear to my heart and it makes me sad know that it's developer Presto Studios went out of business. But I hope this review compels at least one person to check this game out and ensure that the memory of Presto Studios live on.

*Images are taken from official sources and fall under Free Use in Copyright Law.

Beyond Atlantis Review: Baffleing, Surreal, and Weird As Hell

This is the second of five reviews detailing games that defined my early childhood.

Developer: Cryo Interactive
Publisher: Dreamcatcher Interactive
Version Reviewed: Beyond Atlantis for Windows 98
Price: $9.99 on Good Old Games.
Released: June 14th, 2000

Beyond Atlantis is a game that baffles me. It baffled me when I was a child and it still baffles as an adult. It not a bad game and it is a very creative, but there is something odd about it. Years later I discovered that Beyond Atlantis is actually a sequel to another game called Atlantis so maybe I have to play that to fully understand what is going on in this game. Though part of me feels even that won't help me understand what the hell is happening in this game. I guess I'll get this review started then to put in context my bafflement.

The Guardian of the Crystal aka the guy that never explains anything about what the hell is going on.

In Beyond Atlantis you play as some guy named Ten who goes on some journey through the mountains and finds some flying boat on top of a frozen pond. On the boat is some guy who calls himself "The Guardian of the Crystal" gives you a weird crystal ball, some triangular rocks, and tells you to built a road made out of journeys to reach Shambala in a dream. You then use the rocks scattered on the boat to travel into the bodies of other people in ancient Ireland, Mexico, and China to find other rocks to complete the road or something like that. This game is surreal as hell and it never really gives any logic for what the hell is happening and why you should care. None of the characters ever act like anything is wrong or out of the ordinary even when they are talking to the reanimated head of an ancient Irish king that raped a god. The ending also doesn't make any sense. It something about the Light and the Darkness coming together to become the new Adam and Eve or something. Even after playing three times through I still do not understand it.

Just the disembodied head of an ancient pagan goddess. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

But this surreal presentation isn't without merit. It is the only game that truly feels like you are walking through a dream. Even other games set in dreams like The Evil Within and Psychonauts are usually tied to some some familiar gameplay mechanics like shooting or platforming. But Beyond Atlantis while grounded somewhat in the traditions of point and click adventure, has you doing some truly bizarre things. One puzzle in the Ireland level has you chasing a miniature stone horse that you then dip into the ocean to turn it into a large, very real horse that you ride to an abandoned island. Another puzzle in the Mexico level has you solving math problems to get deeper into a pyramid. But my absolute favorite puzzle has to be in the China level where you have to do paper work in hell to get some mushroom so you can give it to an immortal alchemist so he will give the item you need to beat the level. Not all the puzzles are as bizarrely interesting, some require you to simply find objects in the environment like a freaking hidden object game and other are simply illogicality tedious rather then fun. There are also these random sequences where you use the crystal thing the guardian guy gives you to go into space and I could never understand the purpose of these sequences.

So hell is basically the DMV run by people with animal heads. Can't say I'm surprised.

However, those out of nowhere outer space sequences are really pretty. Beyond Atlantis has some really beautiful art design and every single area feels unique and pretty to look at. The music is also well done and always fits the current area you are in. The character models on the other hand are not as good and the voice acting is hilariously bad. But even the bad character models and voice acting help reinforce the dream like feel the entire game has. All in all the game runs well and I did not run into any technical problems during my playthrough even on my old Windows 98 computer.

Talking to a frog god in the land of the dead. One of the least weird things in this game.

So what is Beyond Atlantis, well it is like playing through a really strange, but ultimately good dream. While its lack of any real sense my turn some people off those looking for a coherent experience and some of it puzzle will undoubtedly require a trip to Gamefaqs to find the answer, it is something you are unlikely never to forget due to it incredible creativity. If you want something strange and different you can't really go wrong with Beyond Atlantis. You can find Beyond Atlantis on Good Old Games along with all the rest of the games in the series, which I really need to get into so I may finally understand what the hell is going on in this game after all these years.

*Images are taken from official sources and fall under Free Use in Copyright Law.

Myst Review: The Original Alone on an Island Game

The first of five reviews detailing my thoughts on games that defined my early childhood.

Developer: Cyan Inc.
Publisher: Brøderbund
Version(s) Reviewed: Myst Masterpiece Edition, and realMyst Masterpiece Edition for PC
Price: $5.99
Released: September 24th, 1993

Myst was the first "real" game I ever played. Before Myst the only games I used to play were Bejeweled and Breakout on my dad's palm pilot. But Myst really opened the flood gates for me and looking back really defined what I would look for in games for years to come. However, a lot of modern critics have declared that Myst is an outdated piece of history best left forgotten. After recently coming back to it I can understand why critics often call it outdated, but I will not say in a million years that it deserves to be forgotten. So let me tell you why Myst is something you should at least give a chance.

The Mechanical Age is one of many area you can explore in Myst.

In Myst, you play as a nameless stranger that ends up on a mysterious island after reading a book describing the location and touching the moving picture at the very end of the book. That is literally all the context you are given at the beginning of the game and you are expected to piece together as you progress through the game. The main goal the player has is to explore the island and figure out what is going on solving puzzles along the way. I really don't want to dive any deeper into the story than that because part of the fun of Myst is figuring out what is going on. I will say that the story is interestingly told and still holds up well today in spite of it's rather minimalist presentation. My only complaint with the story is that the true ending is just blatant sequel bait.

The Channelwood Age is another area you can explore in Myst.

What doesn't hold up as well is several of the game's puzzle designs. The central flow of the game has you solving a puzzle on the main island so you can go to another area of the game. Then finding one of two pages in that area and heading back to the main island. Unlike modern puzzle games like Portal and The Swapper which focus on a single puzzle mechanic and teach players the logic behind them and slowly increase the difficultly, Myst's puzzles each have a unique logic to them and range form easy to extremely hard to solve then others. Perhaps some of the most infamous puzzles are the ones that involve sound which one area of the game focuses on exclusively. I was unable to solve this area as a kid and had trouble with it as an adult. However, most of the puzzles aren't that hard to figure out and there is a library on the main island where you can read about all the areas in the game to help you if you get stuck.

See these books? You are going to be reading some of them to figure out Myst's many puzzles.

Graphically, Myst hasn't aged well either with muddy textures and jagged polygons that are unappealing to the eye. The art style on the other hand holds up just fine and each area has its own unique look and feel. The sound is a bit compressed by modern standards, but other then that sound effects and music are good. The live action cutscenes may come across as jarring for younger gamers though they are thankfully well acted and are not hokey enough to hurt the atmosphere of the game. There is also a full 3D remake of Myst called realMyst Masterpiece Edition that also features a new area that connects Myst to it's sequel Riven, but be warned this version of the game is very buggy and prone to crashing.

realMyst looks good, but is very unstable.

Myst is a game that is very near and dear to my heart, but I am also very aware that it is not a game for everyone. If you are someone that likes hardcore action and cathartic challenge in your games Myst is not for you. Myst is a slow, pondering experience that is not always a intuitive experience. But I do feel that if you have the time and patience you should at least check it out. Myst is a game that helped pioneer environmental storytelling in video games and it is worth playing through just to put into perceptive how far interactive storytelling has come.

*Images are taken from official sources and fall under Free Use in Copyright Law.

Secondhand Opinion: Five Nights at Freddy's 3

Are you ready for Freddy...again?

It has been eight months since the original Five Nights at Freddy's appeared on the indie scene and it already has had two sequels. Now I am happy that a cheap indie game made by one person is getting a lot of attention, but I am getting a little burned out with this series. It not that the sequels are bad or anything, Five Nights of Freddy's 2 improved on the formula the first game established and Five Nights at Freddy's 3 tries do shake things up with some interesting new mechanics it seems. It just that the games are not spacing themselves out enough. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 was made three months after the original and now five months later we have yet another one and it is getting predicable in spite of my crippling phobia of fursuits and animatronics and I know I'm not the only one. But, regardless of my negative ramblings I'm going to at least check out the demo and the story seems pretty conclusive if what I've been seeing on social networks is true. So hopefully Scott Cawthon, the creator of Five Nights at Freddy's, will move onto making new projects. But, if he does indeed make another one can he at the very least give it a year so that when we come back to it it feels at little fresh again. I have my fingers crossed that this will be the last we see of Five Nights at Freddy's for a while.