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If you keep everything in perspective...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: January 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a game that you'll either love to hate or hate to love. For my wife and I, we waffled between the two so much that I'm not sure what our final verdict really is. This is not a particularly "polished" game, but then it cost us less than half of what we paid for 'Uru - Ages Beyond Myst', which also inflicted its own share of ambiguity.

What 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'(JCE) is, is basically a 'Syberia' clone; a 3rd-person, story-driven adventure game with a head-strong female protagonist who must decide between her modern-day profession, with all of its pressures, and her developing morals and ethics. "Will she do the right thing?" This genre was pioneered by the classic game 'The Longest Journey' and then driven to the forefront by Benoit Sokal's 'Syberia'.

The success of 'Syberia' was due to several key factors: an excellent storyline, a variety of well designed and integrated puzzles to solve, extremely lush and atmospheric graphics and music, and just the right amount of interaction with the secondary characters of the story ('The Longest Journey' took this last point to the irritating extreme).

JCE tries to emulate this winning formula in so many ways that it ultimately fails with a "been-there-done-that" feel. It also consistently comes up a rung or two short in just about every category of comparison. The story is actually pretty good with its "revisitation" of the classic Jules Verne story.

The modern protagonist Ariene, though, is just a whinier version of Kate Walker of 'Syberia' fame. You meet and interact with several other characters along the way and, while they all are very well conceived and voiced, they all come across as lazy and selfish. "I'm not going to do anything for you until you do something for me". This is a typical way of building puzzle solving into the progression of the story, but it damages any sympathy with these characters that the designers hope to build along the way. Plus, all of them just stand (or sit) in one place until you interact with them. Don't they have anything else to do? One nice touch, though, was the animals that were inserted throughout the story (mostly just for eye-candy, but really well done).

The graphics are very colorful and well rendered but, again, they seemed to lack any "atmosphere". Everything was bright and sunny (strange how its always that consistently bright underground). There's definitely a hint of menace built into the story, but you never feel any of it in the surroundings. The music score, also very well done at times, echoes this lack of depth or atmosphere.

Finally, we address the puzzles. We are big fans of puzzles in adventure games, but we have two strict rules to follow. They must be both logical and fair. If they are well integrated into the story of the game, then all the better. Unfortunately, a lot of the puzzles in this game fail the fair and logical tests. Fairness was compromised by the fact that we were forced to pixel hunt for a LOT of the critical inventory items. Plus, you are required to cover vast distances within this game over and over again without the aid of a zip icon. We timed it and it took Ariene over 30 seconds to run from one end of a particular scene to the other side. That's not a good way to build complexity into your puzzles. For an example of how they fail in the logic category, just go out to their website and try the demo game. The main puzzle of the demo happens to be the worst offender of this rule in the entire game. If you are a lateral thinker and have no problems with this puzzle then this is the game for you!

The bottom line is, its not too bad of a game considering the price. Hopefully, they can work on ironing out these other irritants while working on their next game, which is rumored to be 'Around the World in 80 Days'.

Glad I only paid a buck for this!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: May 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Risking a dollar for this at the local library sale, I can safely say I got my money's worth.

Very shortly into it, I decided the game made little sense in its layout and clues. I've read that this was originally written in another language and had to be translated. Perhaps this is why there are several odd turns of phrases. (ex: a thigh or arm bone, when heated, is labelled 'hardened cranium')Doesn't make up for the rest of the game, though.

I finally gave up and out of pure curiosity, set the laptop next to the computer and followed a walkthrough step by step. TEDIOUS is the word. Running back and forth...one field was 4 clicks and even with Arianne at a loping run, it still took forever. Right now, I don't know if I will even finish it- maybe if I'm absolutely bored out of my hardened cranium.

Good graphics makes me overlook lesser problems, but the graphics in this was not good enough. The sky was pretty much blank and while there where a few nice shots, the scenery was not special at all. Too, there was little movement of secondary characters, trees, etc. What did move tended to be very repetitive.

Gameplay was frustrating. Some hotspots were very, VERY small, which forced you to spend too much time trying to find the exact point. On several instances, a necessary hotspot would not appear until you finished other actions.

Clues, when existent, made little sense. Perhaps it was that translation thing again, but I don't think so. Just a poorly planned game. Period.

Overall, I'm afraid I have to recommend you save your money, time, and wits. There are far too many better games out there to bother with Journey- not even for a buck.

very enjoyable

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have to say, I really enjoyed this game. I like games that have a nice mix of interaction, puzzles, and "visual candy." This is that game. It is a bit of a pain here and there with a couple of technical problems, but if you save the game a lot, it really isn't too much of a bother. I enjoyed the story, the characters, and I would love to find more games like this, as the technology gets better. If you like games more like Syberia than Myst, this game is worth the purchase.

Aaggghh...the agony!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Forget this one. This is a textbook example of a good idea that is poorly executed. It's a real shame, because the graphics are very nice and the story would be interesting...but I found myself purposely choosing the ending (of two choices) that would just end the agony rather than continue on with the story.

There are so many glitches in the game it is more frustrating than entertaining. There are puzzles in the game that have no earthly resemblance to the "alleged" clues and are virtually unsolveable without internet help. Often, the character is standing directly in front of (blocking) some object requiring interaction, and moving her is impossible. Also, it has far too much time-consuming repetition and LONG travel sequences. The clumsy glitch-ridden navigation drove me up the wall. There are even places in the game where your character can get physically stuck - not on purpose, but by faulty game design.

I'd love to replay this game if it were redone, but I wouldn't even sell my copy because it would be cruel and unusual punishment for the next buyer!

Pretty dull

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Despite having a nice variety of locations and artistic style( a value I probally place too much emphasis on in video games), this game falls flat and becomes another sad excersice in computer adventure gaming..Only get if you are a true fan of the genre and have nothing to play

Painful To Navigate

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I wanted to like this game, the story line is decent and the graphics are good but navigating the screens is painful. They have taken what could have been a good game and ruined it by not paying attention to some basic navigation problems. The cursor indicates that you can move in a direction by showing shoe prints when you hold the cursor over a hot spot. But in this game the hot spots are tiny or in a lot of cases missing. This makes something that should be simple, moving around the screens, very frustrating. In one screen after 5 minutes of searching I couldn't find any hot spots that would allow me to move forward into the market area, even though it was evident that it was where I needed to go. So I gave up and started randomly clicking in the screen, which eventually allowed me to move forward, but again, no hot spots to indicate where I could move to from that position. So more random clicking to try to get to one of the booths in the market. After having to do this to move several times the screen finally changed to show the market from a different angle and at that point I had navigational hot spots again. The tiny hot spots also caused a problem with figuring out what items I was supposed to pick up or look at. It caused me to miss several items in certain screens. And in a few cases the hot spot was completely off the item altogether, causing some confusion as to which item I was to pick up or look at. Another annoying problem was that often my character would stand right in front of what I needed to look at or touch. So I had to keep clicking the screen around her to try to move her out of the way in order to get to the item in question. So unless you have an infinite amount of time and patience, try some other game.

Engaging story, frustrating execution

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I agree with some of the other reviewers that this game had potential, but the frustration level nearly outweighed any fun I experienced playing it. I love adventure games, so I tolerated the problems enough to finish it; but I can say I was glad when it was over.

The biggest problem was navigation--the cursor would indicate you could move off screen only 1/2 the time you actually could. This is misleading, and I don't enjoy games that force me to try things at random or run about aimlessly in order to determine exactly what they expect me to do. For example, at one point you need to pick up some sand. You're on a beach, so it's all around you. But of course you have to click in an exact spot to do it! Tedious.

I still think this game is worth playing, because of the engaging story (similar to Syberia 1 & 2), but be sure to have one or two walk-throughs handy.

Wouldn't even load = Video problems

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have a very state-of-the-art computer with all the accelerated video, drivers, sound, etc that is needed to run any game., with all the drivers kept up to date. This game wouldn't even load and kept crashing the system, even to the "blue screen" of dumping physical memory. I ran all patches, changed video modes, changed compatibility modes and nothing would work. If that's any indication of what's left for problems if it ever runs, check out the other reviews of those who actually got it to work...lots of problems. What a shame such a promising game ended up such a waste.

Some problems with nagviation story ok. $9.99 at EBGames

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Anyway, I just wanted to shared that your local EBGames (or the online website) has the same game brand new at $9.99.
I got bored after a few hours of playing this game. There aren't too many places to see. You're stuck at the same place most of the time and you have to visit the same places time after time because most items are event activated meaning that they only get activated after some events occur.
There were some bugs with the animation engine. Sometimes there's no indication for the hotspots so you'll be stuck at some point wondering what to do next. And some of the puzzles can be challenging.
I got through with the help of a walkthrough.

What fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Sure, okay there were a few things in the game that made it a little hard to play. But over all it is a great game! and it's one that you can play with friends or family. My sister and I played it all weekend long, we just couldn't get enough of it. buy this game, or rent it. either way, you should really play it. :)

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