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Good for a pleasant afternoon, but not much more.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 55 / 56
Date: September 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Despite the picture on the box, most of the scenery takes place in Czech Republic, followed by small bits in France and Mexico. The storyline becomes apparent during the game play, and is not difficult to follow, even if you pay attention to a television program instead of this game. The play involves talking to people, finding objects by mousing over them, combining and using objects in the inventory, and solving a few puzzles.

The good parts of the game:
.The graphics are pretty good, and include rain (lots and lots of rain), a bit of snow, and realistically walking people.
. The puzzles are easy enough to solve without being a pain or a bore.
. You can't get lost anywhere, because the game will not let you either use the wrong items (match on the map to burn it up) or get lost, because you can't go too far without performing certain tasks or finding certain objects.
. You can turn this game off and go to bed without an aching to get back.

The bad parts:
. The game sometimes hangs, usually if there is another program running in the background.
. The tasks can be tedious and annoying, such as talking to a certain person, then another person, then back again, then walking away for a bit, then walking back and talking again.
. The characters have odd accents - there are several cockneys, and the bad guys sound like Sean Connery. The main character, Martin, has a deep, pleasant voice.
. If you miss a bit of dialogue, or even an entire conversation, you can't go back and play it again, unless, of course, you saved the game just before that point.
. The grammar, punctuation, and spelling in the dialogues are severly lacking.
. Every so often Martin exclaims, "I'd better get out of here quickly" as he saunters off slowly. Luckily, everyone else is even slower so he easily gets away.

Easy and Beautiful

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 24 / 24
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Martin Holan is a young archaeologist working at a rather boring research project when his uncle, also an archaeologist, calls to tell him of an interesting discovery. Roadworkers in Prague have unearthed a WWII-era bunker. Its contents have interesting implications for uncle's lifelong work. Will Martin go check it out?

NiBiRu is a lovely point and click game from the people who brought us Black Mirror and it shares many of that game's strong points while having overcome some of the glitches. The sound and graphics are beautiful, of course. The voice acting is quite good. The many characters have a variety of accents --appropriate, as Martin is the only American in the game-- and they are all quite understandable and realistic. Incidental music only appears from time to time, but is low-key and interesting enough not to be annoying. And other F/X, such as storms, traffic sounds and the like, give fullness to the gaming experience. Pre-rendered locations are nicely detailed, although there is less animation than in Black Mirror. Characters are believable, rather than super-real. Movement is somewhat limited, but what there is works.

Puzzle-wise, NiBiRu is extremely easy. Most of the puzzles are inventory-type, with only about half a dozen discrete mechanical puzzles thrown in. Of the latter, only one was at all difficult, and that one was VERY difficult; I worked at it for probably six hours over the course of three days before giving up and consulting a walkthrough for the answer. There was one other sticky place with an unlikely solution that you pretty much had to stumble on by chance, as Martin gave no clue what he was thinking. There were a couple very easy timed puzzles (I got through them without a problem on the first try) and one place you could die (I only found one, anyway). However, at that point if you died, the game automatically reloaded right at the beginning of the sequence, without playing any annoying "consequences of failure" sequence. So you could try over and over again without too much frustration.

There are a couple things to keep in mind while playing this game. First, as in Black Mirror, you have to right-click as well as left click on every hotspot, as well as every item in your inventory, as this might reveal more information. Some people have a very hard time keeping track of this; it didn't bother me. On extremely rare occasions, you can't pick up inventory until you know what you need it for (or at least have visited the location where you need it). On the other hand, there are several tasks you CAN do without the faintest idea why you're doing them, before you have all the necessary parts. This can lead to a lot of wandering around and head-scratching. You can't replay or revisit dialog, but I didn't see any reason why you would have to. I liked that the dialog took care of itself; that is, once you clicked on a topic your characters just conversed about it until they were done, without your having to click on interminable conversation trees. I also liked that when a task took time--as when Martin had to wait for something--a clock simply appeared and ticked around the dial a couple times; then the game proceeded. This did away with the problem of wandering around looking for something else to do to advance the action.

The endgame showed up pretty abruptly and there wasn't much you could do but watch it unroll. I think I would have liked the possibility of a couple different endings, or more possible interaction. All in all, NiBiRu played more like a piece of interactive fiction: fairly linear, with a predetermined outcome the gamer could not influence much. After a brain-bending, puzzle-heavy game, it was a nice relaxing change of pace that took me about 15 hours, maybe less. If you like classic point and click, you'll like this one.

Yawwwn...another dull play by Adventure Company

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: September 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game definitely has nice graphics. The story is so-so just like the "prize" ending sequence, really lacks mystery and intrigue. I'm not a fan of Syberia (although loved the graphics) either and I liken this game to it. There is no challenge when getting around the game, I like to call this "hot-spots-for-idiots". Like another reviewer said, a nice afternoon of play. Why an afternoon? Because if you could get the character to run it would take about an hour rather than a few hours. You have to paaainfully watch ol' Marty walk like a slug to the next hotspot. There are a few puzzles but only one is somewhat challenging. Repetition is the basis for the "challenge". I did not experience crashing issues running on Windows XP with SP2 which is definitely a plus. Since there is such a lack of good adventure games out there, you may just get this when it sells for cheap. Amazon has changed their policy on who can sell which is bad if you like to recycle games like myself. Grrr I gave it an overall 2 stars but based on stable gameplay and graphics I'd give it 2.5 or a C+.

REAL MIXED

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: May 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Boy, and I mean the title of my feelings about this game. For one thing do NOT believe the "requiriments" given to play this game. The graphics are no better than their earlier game, "Black Mirror", but you need more to play it.

Having said that, the promised story line only sort of delivered. Yes, there were Nazi plots for eternal life and all that sort of thing (Indiana Jones like), and the part in the Nazi mystery mines were different, but all in all as far as the extraterrestial, Mayan, etc., bit, they really were a tag on, and didn't deliver as the description of the game would sucker you into buying.

Certainly, if you are close to a "crazed" Adventure Gamer as I am, graphics count for a lot, and these were OK, but as I said before, they weren't much above "Black Mirror".

Moving on: The quality of enjoyment was REAL MIXED. All too many times you are required to talk to the same people at least THREE times to be able to move on. Aside from that, there was also lot of "toing and fro-ing" to the same people, and that to me was not well integrated into the story line of the game, but more just to get THROUGH with IT.

There is one truly KILLER puzzle in there - just towards the end, and unless you are a Rubic's Cube fan (I'm NOT), you like me WILL resort to a "Cheat". DO IT. Most folks on the gamer sites have admitted to this. BOY, it helps.

A final word about the graphics, "acting", etc. For some reason the same guys who put out "Dark Mirror" are really into RAIN - BIG TIME. No one seems to get wet, but it's depressing. The acting, dialogue, etc., is pathetic for the most part. The dialog REALLY needs help as to the people who were hired to read it (didn't see names on the credits, but by then I didn't care.)

The game promised a lot, took a lot in hardware and software (mine wasn't all that shabby), and delivered - only sort of.

As a final note, I've read at least 2 reviews before mine who noted the game playing like they were working under water. If you don't have the right combination of video card and OS, you will meet the same thing - or worse. I would NOT recommend buying this game, but if you want to, I'm pretty sure the used copies are out there. Buy the cheapest you can find.

Disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The only reason that I did not give this 1 star in each category is that it did fairly well in the "creep me out" factor in a couple of spots.

Issues I had with the game:

Needless profanity. If you're going to swear, have a reason other than trying to make the game seem--and fail--to be more adult oriented.

Mindless tasks. The puzzles were challenging but not impossible, the mindless tasks (talk to the guard four or five times without accomplishing anything in between conversations) is a common complaint and rightly so.

Worst of all? The ending, I mean I went through all that for such a worthless ending? Let me put it this way: Everyone dies for nothing. I was so disappointed by the ending that I immediately uninstalled the game and will definitely not be returning to Nibiru. In fact, the only good thing about the ending is that it was so final that there's no chance of a sequel.

There are many more worthwhile games to play

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: July 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My list of complaints about NiBiRu is very long, but it can be boiled down to a few items:

1. The most frustratingly linear gameplay I've ever experienced. You must often talk to people (that your character says they have nothing to say to) two or three times before you get results, and often in a certain order. If you solve a puzzle before the game 'thinks' you should, it has no effect - you must proceed to click on items or people in the right order until you reach the scripted 'puzzle solving' point.

2. Bad (and somewhat racist) voice acting. The main character speaks in a stunted manner that becomes very annoying. Everyone but the main character has an accent, and all of them are poorly done. The NPCs are almost all bad stereotypes of various nationalities, too.

3. Wildly varying puzzle difficulties. Some are so easy they're no fun, and one is so hard I was ready to quit the game even when I had the printed solution sitting right in front of me (that's right, I had to look it up before I smashed my computer). Most are middling in difficulty, but you must still do every single action in the right order to complete them, even if you have it solved in your mind and can do it faster.

4. The main character is totally unlikable. He whines, he lies to almost every NPC just to get his way, he does really underhanded things to proceed in his quest, he is a poor depiction of an archaeologist... Not someone I can relate to as I play through an entire game.

Disappointing....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Have previously played MISSING from the Adventure Company and was hoping the puzzles in this game would be similar. HUGE disappointment. Very few puzzles - possibly six total - and most of them were pretty lame. Required very little thought.

A lot of mindless babbling on the part of the "hero." A big "time filler" perhaps. Also a lot of back and forth with characters which also seemed like a waste of time. Beat the game in three sessions (about six hours total) and the ending was lame.

Skip this one... buy MISSING if you're looking for intellectual challenges.

Great game...leaves you wanting more!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm looking forward to a sequel, the graphics were very nice and puzzles weren't too hard. I would have preferred a little more adventuring around but all in all it was a very good game and I highly recommend it!

Nibiru - great game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I LOVE adventure games so I had to play this one of course. Nibiru is fairly easy and fun to play. It has a lot of puzzles and reminds me of "Black Mirror" very much so. I also played Black Mirror and this was my favorite after Syberia and Syberia II. Ahhh what can I say. If you like all the above you will have fun playing NiBiRu. You won't find anything super hard and the game won't let you continue unless the puzzle is solved. I played it pretty quick but had fun..... great graphics. But hey - that is just me.

One word: Ridiculous.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: May 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game was ridiculous.

I was pretty disappointed. First of all, Martin, though an okay guy is constantly stating the obvious. The other characters are also annoying, though you don't really get to know any of them anyway. Their accents are, once again, ridiculous. What kind of accents are they, even? It sounds as though the same guy did all of the voices in the entire game.

Some tasks were pretty fun, but a lot of them were tedious, talking to the same people over and over and doing *ridiculous* things that would never work and were hard to take seriously.

The graphics themselves weren't that bad, but as another review said, I definitely got sick of watching Arthritic Martin limp his way around the room. Whenever he would turn, it looked like the actual floor tile turned with him on it. My dad now walks around the house like Martin to make all of us laugh, actually.

All of the conversations were already set by the game, there was no choosing what Martin would say to have a different effect on the story line.

There was too much sitting back and watching, and the storyline didn't flow very well.

I guess it was okay, and did help hold me over until the next Nancy Drew Game, but be sure to play all of those before you play NiBiru.

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