The Longest Journey


The Longest Journey is a large game with a complex story, a huge cast
of characters, good music, and some of the most wonderful scenery you
could ever hope to see in a computer game.


Graphics:
	3-D characters on a 2-D background.
	The backgrounds were spectacular.  Both Stark and Arcadia come
	to life in sparkling, beautiful detail.  This game is worth
	the purchase price just to see all the locations and wonderful
	scenery.

Music:
	Seemed to always set the mood correctly.  It wasn't the
	startling, smoky jazz of Discworld Noir, but it worked very
	well at all times.
	
Animation:
	The characters suffered from the usual artifacts of 3-D
	polygon-based characters.  I always want more polygons so the
	characters can have more detail, less aliasing effects, better
	movement fluidity, etc.  All that said, I really didn't have
	that many issues with the characters.  Some of the most
	notable limitations were the hands without fingers, and the
	way that characters never really interacted with objects.
	They basically waved their hands in the general area and you
	had to imagine that an object was picked up, handed over, etc.
	Another side effect of the 3-D characters was the fact that
	physical fight scenes looked outright ridiculous -- awkward,
	lumbering, no sense of reality at all.  On the plus side, the
	cut scenes were breathtaking, making me wish the characters
	could move and look like that throughout the game.

Plot/Theme:
	The basic plot line is basic enough; normal young person is
	required to save the world, but doesn't have the skills or
	knowledge to even know where to begin.  The nice part about
	this game is the way that it reveals the story to us (and
	April) a bit at a time as time goes on.  The full story ends
	up being quite complex by the time you reach the end, with a
	lot of stops on the way to learn more about other characters.
	This is a game where you enjoy the journey for its own sake.
	As Zelazny said, "It's not the fleece that's important, it's
	the getting of it".

Voices:
	Superb voice acting.  Not a jarring note anywhere (some of the
	voices were jarring, but they always seemed to fit the
	character, complete with appropriate emotions for the
	conversation.  The much talked about bad language seemed to be
	properly in sync with the characters spouting it; certainly
	not worth any concern.


Characters:
	Nice characters, nasty characters, simple characters, strange
	characters, alien characters.  There are a LOT of characters
	in this game, and they all work well towards supporting the
	story as it unfolds.  The central character (April Ryan) is a
	very detailed and complex character indeed.

Puzzles:
	Some mechanical puzzles, some logic puzzles, many inventory-
	based puzzles.  The dialog trees didn't seem to have any
	effect on the finaloutcome, so I wouldn't call them puzzles.

Ugly puzzles:
        None.  You couldn't die, there were no timed or action
	sequences which required extreme mouse speed or dexterity.
	

Puzzle Difficulty:
       For the most part, they were all quite easy.  The only time
       we had to consult a walkthrough was when we had forgotten
       to pick something up from a previously visited location.
       I thought we had been dead-ended, but the game "magically"
       removed some roadblocks from our path to allow us to get
       the missing item and use it -- impressive design.

Controls:
	Mouse-based, very simple, worked very well.

Bugs:
	I had some 3-D objects flickering on me, but a device driver
	upgrade fixed that completely.  Everyone knows about the
	infamous stuttering problem by now, so all I will say is that
	I suffered from the audio stuttering problem, but was able to
	tweak my system sufficiently to make it ignorable.  Funcom has
	GOT to get a fix for that out to the world ASAP.

Pros:
	Great story, great graphics, great cutscenes, great characters,
	great --- well, almost everything.

Cons:
	Audio stuttering.
	Characters performing fight scenes looks ridiculous.
	Hands with no fingers.
	Characters interacted poorly with their environment when it
	came to picking up or transferring objects.
	
Conclusion:

	This game feels like a mix of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings,
	Lucas's Star Wars, L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Chaos/Order books, and
	Grimm's Fairy Tales (at one point in the game, I actually
	hunted around for some gingerbread walls).  Even April intones
	"Use the Force, Luke" at one point in the game.  To put in
	different terms, when you play this game you will be embarking
	on a long journey, not always pleasant, but definitely
	satisfying.  In the case of The Longest Journey, I definitely
	enjoyed the journey and would recommend it to anyone.


	Definitely a top ten game in all respects