Schizm

"There is no excuse for a game with so much potential to be this frustrating!"

I wanted to give this game a higher score - I wanted to say that this is a game that people can enjoy, even if it is a point-and-click puzzler. I wanted to at least say that die-hard adventure fans would like it - but alas, it is not to be!

I should first note that I played the CD-ROM version, not the DVD. I understand that the DVD is supposed to have much higher resolution of graphics - but I really don't understand why this must be! I've never heard of this on any other game - and I've seen older CD-ROM point-and-clickers that had better graphics than this! There is just no excuse! The graphics are unbelievably bad! I mean, the design and layout are wonderful - but everything is super pixelated - a flaw that gets even worse in darker areas! But the lowest point about this is that many of the puzzles require you to be able to decipher the alien language which means you must be able to see and identify many alien glyphs and so forth - but often the glyphs are far away and too pixelated to identify! It really destroys the fun factor here!

And how about those puzzles! They definitely require good audio/visual observation skills! There are many that are fun and challenging - and to their credit, as hard as they are, they usually make sense in this alien world. HOWEVER: There are about three or four which are flat out, unbelievably impossible! I mean go back to Calculus classes impossible! One of these comes to you almost right away, and may deter many gamers. My suggestion? Keep a good walk-through handy! Don't feel bad if you have to cheat your way through - all of us who have played this did!

Difficult puzzles are one thing - puzzles based on pixelated and unreadable graphics is quite another. And, I swear there is one where the solution you must use is incorrect under the rules of the puzzle itself. I can't really describe it here, but let's just say that even the walk-through I was using gave me specific instructions on HOW to get the answer, and then GAVE ME the answer - and the answer they gave didn't even follow the rules of their own solution! The answers were all one-point off! Unbelievable!!

A further gripe is in the layout of the alien world. For awhile, you are working your way from one area to the next - but near the end, you realize there are only four basic areas, and you will be back-tracking all over them near the end. That in and of itself is not that bad - but because the game makes you play as two players, and only one can be moved at a time, this means when you back-track, you have to back-track TWICE! Once for each character! This really kills the fun of the game in the end - and I finally just read the walkthrough straight out to finish because I knew once I turned the game off this time, I wouldn't be going back!!

It is sad, because this really could have been a good game. The graphics COULD HAVE been unparalleled, but they are not. The puzzles could have been expertly integrated - but they are either impossible to comprehend, illegible due to graphics, or just plain wrong!

Well, I would only play this game if you have no problem working through the game with a walk-through. Sadly, the only fun-factor a adventure/puzzler game has is in making you feel you've accomplished something in solving the puzzles - take that away, and you have a game not worth playing! Stay away from it!

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/28/04