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.