Amber: Journeys Beyond

"You receive a letter from a friend in need...."

You learn that your friend wants your help. To visit Roxy, a ghost tracker in a haunted mansion. Will you accept your mission? As you travel down a deserted road, a light flashes across the screen. You find your car-temporarily out of order. What's happened? Why are you here again? With an adventure in a supernatural world, you get sucked into the journey of the unknown. This is Amber: Journeys Beyond.
I first played this masterpiece at my friend Paige's house. Her sister had a collection of the neatest computer games, such as Sanitarium and The Dagger of Amon Ra. Being bored as usual, we decided to find something new to do. Looking through various games, we finally came across the king of a computer games: Amber. After popping it into the computer and actually downloading the game, we never went back to Legends of Lore (I never found out what to do with those green crystals anyway, except constantly hitting myself with one in the face). We were awestruck. Just watching the opening sequence gave us the chills. My adventure had begun....
The first thing I noticed about this game was the graphics. They were so awesome; it made the game seem lifelike. Even your surroundings looked like something from your backyard. I couldn't even imagine how long it took to do that. The next area in the game that was done really well was the background music. With haunting wind and voices from the past, shivers run up and down your spine just listening.
What I really enjoyed about Amber: Journey's Beyond was the fact that you couldn't really do anything wrong in the game. It was impossible to mess up or die. What you really need is your brains. With lots of puzzles even I couldn't figure out (being the oldest and wisest of the group), it kept us absorbed into the game, also keeping us interested and wanting to finish. On the other hand, going as slow as we could kept us busy and more focused on the game itself (you don't even want to know the amount of non-frozen freezies we consumed during gameplay).
This game all together was excellent. It had the fully developed characters, a plot, great graphics, haunting music, adventure and puzzles, different stages throughout time, and of course, what would be a scary game without the ghosts.
This game receives 9 stars from me. I would have given it 10, but what it really needed was more gameplay. After finishing the game, my friends and I were kind of disappointed of how we had finished it so fast. Not that the ending was bad, but it wasn't the outcome we had expected.
Overall, I highly recommend this game to any one who would like a good spook and is a smart thinker. I would rate it 10 and up, because of some freaky scenes I even jumped at. Hopefully, you'll enjoy Amber: Journeys Beyond and the story itself. But be advised: you may never get off the computer.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/20/01, Updated 08/20/01