Schizm: Mysterious Journey (DVD-ROM)

Features:

• Nonviolent 1st-person mystery adventure game
• Solve puzzles to understand a deserted planet
• Immersive 3-D environments
• Nonlinear gameplay
• For 1 player

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

BUY IT- LOVE the SCENERY, BUT A BIT CONFUSING [Posted on 2003-11-07]
I am a puzzle/adventure/story fanatic, all you out there who loved riddle of the sphinx, all myst series, crystal key, longest journey check this out!

Beautiful and complex, but not without bugs [Posted on 2004-03-22]
This is not an easy game, and even hardcore gamers are likely to find themselves scratching their heads. If you're a newbie to the adventure genre, better to start off with something like Syberia.

The puzzles are what define this game. Yes, the graphics are beautiful -- plenty of pre-rendered, first-person beauty that transition wonderfully from scene to scene. The background sound is reasonable and appropriate, although you won't be begging to buy the soundtrack. And you get to play two characters (often they help each other solve a single puzzle). But it's the puzzles you will remember...and they're very tough.

This is, after all, an alien world, and so the fact that you will be decoding other alphabets, working with strange symbols, and even performing plenty of math (!) somewhat makes sense given the story. You have to assume that the locals prefer to lock door and control bridges with puzzles rather than keys, but I'll press the "I believe" button for that. If it's been a little while since high school trig or conversions between number bases, you may want to prepare for some stretching of the brain.

Don't get the wrong idea, though -- these are praiseworthy puzzles, and I dare you to complete them without a walkthrough. They're all perfectly logical (incredibly logical, in fact), so there are no excuses -- but boy, they can be challenging!

The story is sparse, but then in many ways it is supposed to be. This is an alien world, and your job is to figure out how things work, so a large part of that is not knowing exactly what you're doing. That's great. But when the end of the game comes and you're still wondering what it was that you actually just DID...well, that's somewhat less than satisfying.

I have two main complaints. First: the voice acting is, sadly, very -- very -- pathetic. I mean no offense, but even I could do much better. It's actually kind of embarrassing. Fortunately most of the time you're wandering deserted areas.

Second complaint: There is absolutely much too much traveling. I enjoy wandering around new areas as much as the next gamer -- and with scenery like this, you'll want to, too -- but towards the end of the game, things got absurd. In the first locations, everything you needed to solve the puzzles was more or less within a minute's distance (your minutes, not the characters' minutes). By the end, though, I often found myself traveling ridiculous distances on the mere HOPE that what I found at the other end would be worth the travel. And then, if I forgot to bring the 2nd character along with me, I'd have to travel all the way back, get him/her, and travel back yet again. Couldn't there have been a map or something you could click on to jump to places you've been to already?

In the end, though, it's an enjoyable journey for hardcore adventure gamers. It's too bad that, having just finished it, I still have a bad taste in my mouth about all the needless back-and-forth running around I had to do -- because this is in fact and well-designed, thoughtful, and extremely enjoyable game. Just laugh along at the acting and be patient through the travels...the puzzles are enough to test your mettle.

Schizm - Fizm [Posted on 2004-11-14]
I'm not a much of a gamer. You may buy this game for the discount price.

I got this for the impressive graphics. I fail to see anyone solving this without a walkthrough or a decade. The puzzles have some logic but are not related well enough to solve. Many reset themsleves if you save the game or leave the area. Even with a walkthrough, I spent too much travelling to get from clue to solution.

I saw better acting in my high school drama club. Some of the verbal/audio clues were not understandable. If it were not for the walk through I would not have had them. I even saved the game and ran through a number of times at these spots with no luck.

Running 2 characters was fine but having to gather them up near the end and keep them together was quite an annoyance.

Then the hangs. I ran my P4 with no TSR's and still had crashes. That required full reboots and killing of the TSR's.

The beautiful graphics and intrique do not make up for the shortfalls above. I really felt that I wasted my time when I had experienced the chopped off poorly contrived ending.

Sad adventure.

Only for the puzzle and math lovers [Posted on 2005-07-23]
Like the title suggests, Schizm is a difficult game and only for those who are willing to spend the time and patience to copmlete it. Some parts are frustrating, yes, but this game wasn't meant to be completed overnight, or in the space of a few hours for that matter. This game is well-worth the money - I'm not going to pay for an easy game that can be completed in twenty hours.

The graphics are absolutely gorgeous. It seems so real, with the water effects and the sky and the eye-candy. The producers did an excellent job making the worlds have a deserted and mysterious feel about them. Just as good as Myst graphics. As to traveling, well, sit back and enjoy the game. The producers obviously took their time to make this game seem realistic, so don't just play to complete the game and have done with it.

The puzzles start off easy and become more difficult as the game progresses. (Take time to tinker!) At first it was confusing playing with two characters, but gradually it became easier. That also gave me a break in case I was stuck on a puzzle with one character, I could switch to the other character and continue on. Towards the end there are two especially difficult puzzles, one involving math, the other involving auditory processing. They CAN be done without hints/walkthroughs (I did it without hints!). You just need patience. As for the first above-mentioned puzzle, if you don't have geometry under your belt, don't even attempt it. It requires patience and math skills. The second puzzle requires you to listen to a series of alien words and then play them back, though you have to get them in the right order. Difficult if you can't distinguish sounds too well. Bottom line: difficult puzzles but do-able.

Music was awesome, acting fine, I had no trouble with gameplay. Ran smoothly with the DVD-ROM.

The only thing I didn't like is that if you're half-way through a puzzle and you save, when you return to the game the puzzle restarts. No way to get around that, but it's really only a minor problem.

This game certainly does not deserve the poor reviews it has been getting. I have played the Myst series, Nancy Drew series, and several other logic computer games, and am in the middle of Mysterious Journey 2 (the sequel to Schizm- which is so far also excellent). Schizm is the most difficult so far but so enjoyable and rewarding. I'd rather have a difficult game that challenges me rather than one that gives me the answer. Can't wait for any other games the producers are going to make!

Best of the Myst Clones [Posted on 2006-04-20]
This game came the closest in rivaling Myst's amazing sense of aestetics and attention to detail..I also recall being impressed by all the movement animation that played in between clicks, thereby erasing that fake feeling of just magically floating from one hotspot to the next..Some of the puzzles are indeed, infuriating, but there is no shame in using a walkthrough when you have gotten to the point past fun and still have so much left of a beautiful alien world to explore..

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