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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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