The Longest Journey

"An amazing game for a dying genre"

'The Longest Journey' is probably going to be one of the last great point and clicks ever made. This genre was made famous in the early 90's when limited graphics were made up with amazing stories hence the birth of the point and click. The concept is simple. You go from scene to scene, picking up items to use later on in solving puzzles. Developers obviously feel that simple gameplay like this is outdated, and we have been seeing less and less point and clicks made in recent times. Thankfully Funcom the developer behind The Longest Journey feel that the point and click is still a fun genre, and have released this amazing game for us to play.

The Longest Journey focuses around a young girl named April Ryan who has recently been troubled by strange dreams. During the course of her adventure she learns that she is what's known as a 'shifter' someone who can shift between two worlds; Stark a blade runner style future, and Arcadia, a magic realm. Long ago these two worlds were joined but had to be separated to prevent 'chaos' from destroying the world. Now 'chaos' is back, and only April Ryan can save the worlds from certain doom. Sure it sounds cliched, but as the game goes on, the story develops and becomes one of the most truly memorable plots in a game or even movie, EVER!

The Longest Journey uses pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D characters placed on top of them. The backgrounds are beautiful and very detailed, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for the characters. They are poorly rendered and textured, but luckily for the most part animated very well. There are, though a few instances of 'invisible objects' such as when the captain of the Ship 'White Dragon' signs a piece of paper with a pen, but neither are visible. A mention must also be made to the video clips, which are spectacular, showing huge amounts of detail and animation.

The Longest Journey also incorporates voice acting, which for the moist part, is of extremely high quality. The main character April Ryan has different tones to her voice depending on the situation that seem very fitting, adding to the atmosphere of the game immensely. There are the few poorly voiced characters, but this is to be expected. The music is good, though unobtrusive, not always playing. The assortment of music is good, and there is a real difference musically between the two worlds. Again, this adds greatly to the atmosphere.

The gameplay in The Longest Journey is great, but also extremely simplistic. Usually it involves speaking to everyone for clues, picking up every item and using every item on your inventory on something else to solve a puzzle. Luckily though, for the most part the puzzles are extremely logical, though there are the odd illogical puzzles, such as two that involve electricity. Otherwise though, the puzzles are logical, and if you just take a minute to think about them, you can solve them. The Longest Journey also incorporates a handy feature that is April's diary. It automatically logs every conversation that you have, so you can go back over them for clues. Also you can re-watch any of the video clips that you have seen so far. Lastly the character herself writes entries in her diary which is a very good idea, as you can see how she truly feels about things. It adds much more life to the character and makes them seem a lot more real than just a few polygons onscreen. It would be nice to see more features like this in games, as in makes them just that little bit more intuitive. One thing that you should be aware of before buying the longest journey though is the language used. One character in particularly uses the F word as every second word, so those who have a problem with this sort of thing should be well aware of that. The game also deals with a few more 'mature' themes, so this is not a game for young children.

The Longest Journey is truly one of the most memorable gaming experiences in recent times. If you have yet to play The Longest Journey then go out and buy it, as due to poor distribution, it will become very hard to find.
In summary, The Longest Journey is an example of how truly great game don't need the latest graphics or complex gameplay to be good, they just need to be fun.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/22/02, Updated 07/12/02