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Crystal Clearly Superior

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 66 / 71
Date: February 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Pros:

1. Beautiful, immersive, atmospheric worlds. Monumental architecture. Eerie music. Breathtaking cut-scenes. Ugly, creepy arch-villain.

2. For the most part, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to solve the puzzles.

3. Great high-tech tools to use, impressive vehicles to drive and fly, creative use of everyday objects. When you pick items up, they zoom off the screen into your inventory with a whooshing sound. The inventory feature is exceptionally easy to use.

Cons:

1. Some locations are too dark and murky. I suggest that for the very dark places, you might want to adjust the brightness/contrast on your monitor to make it easier to locate the hidden goodies.

2. Some mechanical levers/controls respond correctly only if you move the mouse VERY slowly.

3. The game crashed a couple of times, and I never was able to get autoplay to work.

Bottom line: A superior, very entertaining adventure marred slightly by minor glitches.

Falls Short

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 26 / 28
Date: March 14, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game, in the tradition of Myst and Riven, has appealing environments, reasonably challenging puzzles and a solid storyline, and is ultimately fun to play. Unlike Myst and Riven, Crystal Key offers a 3-D environment to navigate via Quicktime movies rather than clicking through two-dimensional snapshots. There are some disappointments, however. Graphics quality is uneven, and while I avoided serious difficulties the software does seem to contain some bugs. The soundtrack has some pleasing snippets of music, but clearly the producers didn't bother putting together much of a musical score. The interface, while easy to use, reveals some solutions through its highlighting of "hot spots" on the screen. The end of the game lacks the payoff sequence you'd hope to see after spending all those hours working through the puzzles and saving the world. Ultimately, one has some sense that this is basically an unfinished product, but at the price offered, its not a bad value.

Not nearly what I was hoping for

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: August 12, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Because the box showed shots that made it look a lot like Myst or Riven, I thought, "Hey, this looks cool!".

Unfortunately, I forgot the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover".

Even though the graphics we quite nice, and the game utilized the 360-degree environment which was pioneered by Presto Studios in "The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy Of Time", this game really lacked in a plot and story.

Sure, there's puzzles that require a lot of thought. By the time you get to the end, though, your first thought is "That's IT?!?!!? Boy, that wasn't worth it!". A very disappointing ending.

I played this game on a fairly up-to-date PC, and it never made the computer crash, but I did have to go to Dreamcatcher's website twice to download two programs that are important in the playing. Kinda stupid...as other reviewers noted, they shouldn't have released a game with so many bugs.

The Crystal Key left ALOT to be desired.....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: May 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

When I first saw this game on the shelf of my CompUSA store, I was thrilled! I couldn't wait to get home and play it. Once I began the game, reality struck.I was stunned by the lack of solid, vivid screenshots.I was frustrated and very disappointed mostly by the hard to see, fuzzy and nondefinable objects(either while "walking" or standing still) within the game as well as the graphics for the background and foreground shots. The atmospheres were too dark and in contrast to the colors and supposed textures throughout the game.Although the "movies" were nicely done and the graphics within them were expertly executed,the graphics within the interactive sequences of the game could have been awesome if more attention to detail had been given to light and dark as well as clear cut definition of lines and borders within worlds and objects.The so called "puzzles" were not what I had expected nor were they the type of puzzles that make this type of game more challenging and interesting.Most of the items/actions necessary to create the proper reactions were either too obvious or illogical( when you could actually see them!)which had a profound impact on the gameplay as a whole.In fact, the game would have been frustratingly tedious to finish were it not for a hint book that I purchased shortly after installing this sorry excuse for an adventure game. This was a TOTAL letdown and NOT what I expected from Dreamcatcher Int. and CO.

5 years in the making for this?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: May 27, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was really excited about this game. I loved both Myst and Riven and was hoping that this would be as good or at least playable! I read all of the reviews and thought that the bugs and the lighting and the thing crashing every 2 seconds were not going to be that bad. Don't waste your money. This could be an enjoyable game, its not the most challenging but still enjoyable the only thing is you have to worry the whole time that something is going to go wrong, or tools that you know you need to do something just don't work no matter how many times you click on them.You need a cheat book just to tell you where certain things are because you can't see them! I am going to try to finish this game but I am very frustrated. Why would someone put out a game with this may problems?

A waste of money, a waste of time, a waste of 120mega bites

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: January 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I'm sorry, I just could not get into this game.

I'm not even going to talk about all the bugs in this game, that would take forever and I can only use 1,000 words anyway, so i'll just say this: There's no replay value - sure, you can play through the game once, but what do you do with it after you've beaten it? - and there's nothing to keep you interested in the game if you're stuck on a puzzle. I have to say, I think the only reason dreamcatcher makes games like this is so they can sell strategy guides.

Basically, what i'm trying to say here is if you only get the chance to play 10,000 video games in your lifetime, MAKE SURE THE CRYSTAL KEY ISN'T ONE OF THEM!

Good First Attempt

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: May 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

It's been a while since I have picked up a Myst clone that has kept me interested. (Riven was the last, and it was also by Cyan.) While the game is sometimes slow and unintuitive, Dreamcatcher Interactive shows promise in this genre of games. Many of the bugs mentioned by afore reviewers have been ironed out, and some limited keyboard commands have been added for saving and quitting. The puzzels range from simple to confounding, and the worlds are well rendered. The only element that is missing is a sense of culture and identity to these worlds, but someone may not necessarily miss that in a game. It's only twenty bucks SRP, and worth the ride if you are a persistant and patient gamer. Diehard fans of 3D shooters may loose their patience, but people who love to delve into unexplored worlds should find The Crystal Key a satisfying experience.

Less impressed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: February 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

White I agree with the first reviewers accessment, for the most part, I found some of the puzzles quite arbitrary. Who'd think of using a radio to (oops), well, do THAT. I never did find the lever near the spaceship because it was so dark; I had to cheat. The only hint that a certain tool has to be used again is that it stays with you; figuring out what it has to be used on and where is extremely obscure.

When the graphics are good, they are almost great; but when they are bad, they are awful.

Take into account that I play few games. I loved Myst and Riven and solved both. When I got stuck, I could always think of something logical, or at least not totally random, to try. I've played several others of the same sort. Crystal Key is the worst of the lot (thought at $20 also the cheapest).

It would not run on a Mac PPC9500 on 8.1. It did run fine on a new (gold keyboard) PowerBook. It hung on an IBM ThinkPad 760e (Win95).

Oh boy, this one is stinky!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I love puzzles. I loved Myst and Riven. I didn't expect Crystal Key to be as good. I did expect it to be relatively without bugs. The game play and bugs are so horrendous that the game is not playable, much less enjoyable. All I wanted was a nice adventure with some good puzzles - what I got was a migraine.

Yuck! Do not waste your money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 09, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is so full of bugs that it's almost embarrassing. What were the people at Dreamcatcher thinking? Riven and Myst set a very high standard for games. These guys don't even come close. Don't waste your money on this disappointment.

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