The Longest Journey

In anticipation of the release of Dreamfall, I spent some time re-playing through The Longest Journey. The Longest Journey is a 3-D animated adventure game in the style of the old Sierra quest games. I loved the game the first time around and greatly enjoyed the second playing.

The game follows the story of April Ryan, mild manner young one who is having dreams. Many years ago the world was separated into two parts. One part was Stark (ruled by logic) and the other part was Arcadia (ruled by magic). The balance keeps things in check.

The guardian of the balance has vanished and there is no new guardian to take his place. Strange things are happening in Stark (where our story starts), and April eventually finds out that she is a shifter, meaning she can move between Stark and Arcadia on command. It is up to her to find the path back to the guardian realm.

The plot of this game is for adults, not kids. I've never played a game like it, and that made it very intriguing. There is swearing, death (but not the FPS type of death), and philosphical concepts.

The plot unfolds over the course of 13 chapters (and one prologue). As far as adventure games go, this truly is the Longest Journey. Even re-playing it (and knowing all the puzzles), it still took me 4 days to get through the game. Many adventure games often lost their length as the graphics took time away from plot.

This is an adventure game, so puzzles are abound. With the exception of one mind bender early on, the puzzles are straight forward. With some thought, you'll be able to figure them out. And here was only one pixel hunting puzzle (which got me the first time). I thought the puzzles were just right mix of logic and ingenuity. Like the Rubik's Cube,it was as perfect as possible.

The Longest Journey wins points for seamlessly switching between the futuristic blade-runner type world of Stark and the Lord-of-the-rings-ish world of Arcadia. Stylistically they look different, but it all meshes together to bring a consistent game play.

Not every game is perfect, and neither was this one. First, the chapters do not move along consistently. Chapter 2 is uncharacteristically long; while you can fly through the later chapters like a druggie popping pills. This doesn't interrupt the game flow, though, because each game segment flows smoothly into the next. The chapter screens could have been removed without interrupting the game.

My one major complaint about the game is that it is one of the most bug prone games I've ever played. Every few screens I'd get an error and bop back to windows. I quickly learned to save often. What I discovered this time (that i didn't find out the first time i played the game) is that I could just 'alt-tab' back onto the main screen and the game would continue to play / save / etc.. despite the error it had thrown. I often lost parts of the main character in a graphic snafu, but I could deal with that.

If all publishers were putting out games like The Longest Journey; the adventure game genre wouldn't be dead.