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Ruined by the navigation!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I recently purchased Return to Mysterious Island, expecting good graphics and an intruiging plot. What a dissapointment!! I could only stomach this game for about 15 minutes before I started to feel truly sick to my stomach. The game is set up in such a way that the cursor is "stuck" to the screen--whenever you move your mouse, the screen moves with it, resulting in sharp, dizzying movements, and constant picking up of the mouse. I was extremely dissapointed; the plotline was great and I loved the combining objects and health bar ideas, very original. This game has everything--a good plotline, good writing and acting, great music, good graphic, original adventure ideas, interesting puzzles...but the navigation ruins it all! I recommend this game only if you have an extremely strong stomach.

This game is laborious

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 12
Date: May 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing adventure games for several years and always seem to have trouble with games from the Adventure Company. The inventory acquisition logic leaves a whole lot to be desired. Initially it was quite entertaining. But then the game designers' logic took a wild turn and I now find myself GUESSING as to what the game designer wants me to do next rather than thinking about what the next step should be following in logical sequence. More specifically:

1. Pixel hunting. It does not make a game more interesting if the item you require only shows up if you slooooooooowly move your mouse around the screen. Of course, if what you need is logical and you know you are looking for it, it is no longer a pixel hunt. There is no logic for when and where to obtain items.

2. The acquisition and combination and use logic sucks. I am always worried that I combined something into another item and cannot dismantle it if I need an item used to build it. Do I keep pixel hunting for an unknown item? Do I move on to something else? Do I give up?

I would classify this game as frustrating and laborious. I have none of these questions or problems when I play a game from any other publisher/designer so I am having a difficult time understanding why.

I don't like puzzles either. I'm sure there are puzzles ahead for me but I don't really believe I am going to get that far. So, I don't really care if you buy this game or not.

A Decent Game But That Is All

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

You know the drill. Alone on an island, you search for/find/collect/combine/make things. That is the essence of the game. The challenge is to use your ingenuity to cope with your present circumstance. There are only two action sequences in the game. Both are arcade games. The first sequence you can and should ignore. It is a tedious waste of time. There is another way. The second sequence is essential to the game.

As you would expect, this is an inventory game. When I finished the game, I had over 50 items in inventory. This is due to the fact that redundancy is built into the game. At the beginning of the game, the screen displays a "health meter." You must find water and sufficient food to restore you to full health. You will have no problem finding more than enough food. What is left over remains in inventory. If you are dilligent in finding things, you will have enough items in inventory to solve several problems in more than one way. When the problem is solved, the other items remain in inventory. I never found a way to organize the inventory. There are simply too many items, and you are always discovering new ones.

This is not a puzzle game. Rather, there are problems to be solved. There is only one puzzle during the game. You can obviate solving this puzzle with your inventory. The important puzzles are stacked at the end of the game. There is redundancy here also.

The graphics are quite good and sufficiently detailed that it is not difficult to find things. I can remember only two instances where pixel hunting was required.

Those of you who are scientifically challenged will find a few rough patches. Scientific purists, on the other hand, will object to several features in the game such as a Maple tree in Fall color on an island with Palm trees.

All in all, "Return To Mysterious Island" is a game that will keep you interested, but it is not a game that you simply must keep playing.

Way too short

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game starts really well- you wake up in an seemingly abandoned island and have to survive eating coconuts and that kind of stuff. Later on, you explore a bit more the island and begin to settle there, repairing and reconstructing the rests of civilization that were there, seeing & hearing strange things... What had happened in this island?

The game goes downhill from there. What had happened? Well, nothing. There's no mistery to solve. The game seems cut in half, with a obviously very rushed sci fi ending and a shortage of places to explore. The last puzzles consist of clicking buttons until you get it right, because you are not provided any clues or even a hint of why the puzzle is there.

I finished this game the same day I bought it, and I was very dissapointed for the price I paid. Some alternative endings (Or alternative ways to escape) along with more interaction with non-playable characters, more exploration, more "What had happened here?", and a mystery to solve instead of run-around-randomly-combining-items, would have made this the best puzzle-solving game ever.

My advice? Keep searching, you'll find something better.

Not what I expected

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I found the game somewhat boring and hard to follow. It was frustrating not being able to do things with the multiple tools I had in my inventory. While this is not my type of game, people interested in assembling things and making "experiments" might enjoy it.

Great Game, But Extremely Short!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: January 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This was the shortest game I have ever played! The ending came abruptly and was unexpected. It was sort of like, "Oh? Is that all?"

The graphics in the game are absolutely gorgeous! The sound effects are minimal, but what exists are great.

The game is very inventory-heavy. This is the first game I've played that is like this. Many inventory items can be combined to make other items. Some combinations involve combining six or more items! For all the combining I did in the game, I used very little of the resulting items.

The game did crash my system a couple of times -- I don't know why. I am running Windows XP on a one-year old computer with 160 GB hard drive, 256 MB video card, and 512 MB RAM.

The puzzles ranged from easy to hard. Nothing really new or ground-breaking in the puzzles.

There were several parts of the island that were "dead ends" -- you couldn't explore them at all. Also, the cell phone/PDA feature that is built into the game was hardly utilized at all.
With all of these "unused" features combined with the game's extreme shortness, I feel the manufacturer might have had more planned for this game but cut it short in the end.

The abrupt ending combined with all of the unused inventory items, all the unused combined inventory items, and the unexplorable areas made this game a sort of letdown. That's why I only gave it three stars.

Good graphics, bad play

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: May 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I borrowed this game from my sister and pretty much did it all in a few hours. Thus, first off, this game is short, it is a series of actions you must figure out and complete in a semi-certain order. Not a lot of room for independence or exploration. This game also is limited - it takes place on a small island with too few screens. Finally, I couldn't even finish it, because at the very end (I won't spoil!) it was basically impossible for me to be fast enough to do one of the required tasks. So I stopped and uninstalled.

Great graphics, but probably not worth the money. I think this is a Myst wanna-be.

Tightly constructed, decently executed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: April 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Similar engine to the other Jules Verne game "Voyage", this game also places emphasis on item finding and management, offering a ton of things to search for and fiddle around with to come uup with the solutions..Unlike voyage, it seemed to make a little more sense and have a little more releveance to the plot of the game...Nice design, but not designed enough, as you finish up too soon for a proper game's value.. The little time that you do get to spend on this mysterious island does have it's upsides however, and is well worth it for the hardcore adventure gamer.

Too short!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a fun little game. I am a fan of the "Myst style" games, with puzzles and interactive environments. This is a quick game that took me only two evenings to finish off.

The style is nice, the graphics are really wonderful and the story line is intriguing. As the character, Mina, you are stranded on a mysterious island with no way to contact the outside world. After discovering the ruins of previous inhabitants, you must use what is available to you on the island and your own ingenuity to solve the puzzle of Nemo and use the Nautilus to escape.

I have two problems with the game: the length and the sophomoric feel of the puzzles. It is waaaay too short. The puzzles are simply not on par with other games of this genre.

I also would not recommend to it a serious gamer, but I did have fun while it lasted.

I never got to see the ending!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: February 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you're into storylines, this isn't for you. It's too much about heavy thinking, building things and using your inventory than providing you with an indepth plot and some good characters. I enjoyed the graphics, but it wasn't as good as most out there. I spent about 2 weeks on and off with this game, and when I finally got to the end movie, there was a glitch and all I got was a black screen. It's pretty obvious what happens so I didn't bother to replay it, plus I wasn't into it enough to care what happened. Too much brain work involved.

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