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| From: Aspyr
List Price: $39.99
Buy Used: $12.00
You Save: $27.99 (70%)
New (5) Used (18) from $12.00
Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 6571
Platform: Xbox
Genre: Adventure Games
ESRB: Mature
Media: Video Game
Batteries Included: No
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Xbox
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 11268
Model: 11268
UPC: 618870112688
EAN: 0618870112688
ASIN: B000F3Z59S
Release Date: September 8, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: includes book no ring or scraches on disk
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent game, despite the mediocre game play. June 14, 2007
E. Hansen (NY)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you're looking for a game that has great character control, game play, and game choice, this isn't the game for you. However, even though it seems as if it were a game made in the 90's as far as game play goes, the storyline, graphics and music MORE than make up for it. I was so drawn into the story that I was willing to play through the simple game play. It had great scenery, great voice acting, and seriously, this has excellent music. Overall, even with its faults, I'd give this a ten for its strengths.
Bleak Horizons November 12, 2007
Marc Ruby™ (Warren, MI USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a perplexing game. I'm torn between giving it a high ranking or a low one. It's not easy for me to explain the why's of that either. But sit down. We have some time and I have a story to tell you...
Once there was an adventure game called The Longest Journey. It was an intricate tale of approaching doom. Once there was a woman named April Ryan who could live in two worlds. The Longest Day was that unusual thing in games of the time - it was thoughtful, with a rich plot and any number of interesting characters. Long after I have forgotten what happened, I still remember scenes from the game and the pleasure of playing it. That was in 2000, and I had yet to consider adding a game console to the household entertainment.
Now, it's 2007 and my PS2 and XBOX are faithful companions. I was surprised to discover that, miracle of miracles, a sequel had been made, this game - Dreamfall. Dreamfall recaps the style of the original, in terms of a complicated plot that ranges over two worlds and many cities but with some definite differences. We have a new heroine, Zoe Costanza, who lives in Casablanca in the 23rd Century. While there is a great deal of technology about, society has a carefully studied not quite technical style. This helps minimize the contrast between the world that is Zoe's home (called Stark) and the more medieval world where a good bit of the game takes place - Arcadia.
When Zoe volunteers to help her ex-boyfriend out by picking up a package she little expects that this will catapult her out of a state of self-pitying numbness and into an adventure that will turn her life upside down. Soon we are shifting back and forth between Stark and Arcadia. In the former Zoe struggles to stop a corporation from taking over the world by making us all dreamers. In Arcadia April is trying to stop the Azadis from completing their own conquest of the world and the magic in it.
Gameplay is a bit awkward, but bearably so, but fighting control is inadequate. However, fighting isn't really what the game is about. Like a classic adventure game puzzles are the order of the day. Most are interesting, if surmountable, but there is one and only one way to pick locks and it happens way too often. But once again, it is a pretty game, with strong characters and it's easy to forgive any number of sins. Except for one.
At best, this is a bleak game with an endless supply of dark moments. Hope, of course, is an important factor in the playability of the game. Unfortunately, Dreamfall leaves you very little of that, and ends in a truly depressing cliffhanger. In fact, there's no indication from the game that there is any hope of a continuation. It took a desperate search of the Funcom site to discover that the Norwegian Film Fund, of all things, was going to pay for some number of continuation episodes that might, if we are all very good, appear as a collection some day. And that irritated the heck out of me. After all, who, in this world, needs depressing cliffhangers with only a faint hope of relief?
Well, there you have it. After a great deal of hanky twisting I've decided to recognize the game's artistic merits and give it four stars. But be warned. Also be warned that there are some moments of gratuitous profanity that add nothing to the story or atmosphere and one wind up giving the game an unnecessary Mature rating.
An Interactive Novel May 3, 2006
Ben Frazer (Baltimore)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Good though somewhat flawed gameplay is quickly forgotten as you become wrapped up in the staggeringly amazing story!
 More like watching a movie than playing a game May 7, 2006
evilcian (Chicago, IL USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was really excited about this game coming out, and 20 hours of game play later I have to say I'm disappointed. The game has beautiful scenery and an interesting storyline, and is really easy to control. However, the game is at least 60% cut scenes, where there's no actual game play going on. Sometimes, the only involvement you have is making the character run up some stairs from one cut scene to the next. When you are playing the game, there's never any question of what you should do, because you can only interact with objects and people that are key to your mission/current objective. The fighting is clunky and slow, you can't explore the worlds on your own, and you have no freedom to make your own decisions.
All that said, I had fun playing the game, but was really disappointed in the ending. Plus, there's virtually no reason to replay this game, since nothing in it would be different.
I would recommend renting this game and playing it over the course of a week. It's easy and kind of a fun way to pass the time. But there's no reason to buy it.
I th
An Interactive Story That Really Means Something May 9, 2006
Andrew B. Snyder (Madison, WI USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you've perused any online reviews of this game, you'll know the following about Dreamfall: the visuals are lush, the music and voice-acting are gorgeous, the gameplay is...well, not so great. And while many have commented on the engrossing story, I think what is really most remarkable is that it is *about something*. It's a work of interactive fiction that subtly tries to get the player to think about not just the fates of the twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia, but about the world we're in right now. It is an audacious attempt to stretch the boundaries of the medium of videogames, and I think it succeeds spectacularly.
The first game in the series, The Longest Journey, came out in 1999. The end of the 20th century, the "end of history," we were told. And in TLJ, although it was set in the year 2209, the story was literally about the end of time -- the end of a 13,000-year-old divide between science and magic, between order and chaos. But we pulled through -- as April Ryan did -- we made what we thought were the right choices, and we thought the good guys carried the day into the new millenium.
And here we are in 2006. Enter Dreamfall, which looks at its twin worlds through the same eyes that we're looking at ours. We thought we won. We thought we had the bad guys licked, and saved the world. But it didn't turn out that way. Sure, April saved the world, but things went downhill from there. Just as our "post-historical" world is facing new threats and old fears, Stark and Arcadia are facing powerful interests, fear of the unknown, and rage at what they cannot control.
Don't worry; the game isn't hamfisted or preachy. Its story is deftly told, with characters and dialogue that pull you in, and keep you there. As you lead the characters through the story, they will have you in turn angry, joyful, wondering, and choked up. I took 2 days off of work to play it through, and never once was I bored.
About gameplay: sure, it's pretty easy, and not the smoothest on the block. In attempting to stretch the boundaries of video games, it does seem as though the creators occasionally lost sight of what the medium is currently capable of. However, I think the Xbox version really lends itself to approaching Dreamfall more as a piece of interactive fiction: I could relax on my couch, settle in comfortably, and let the story unfold around me.
Bottom line: Dreamfall will pull you in, and leave you wanting more. It will make you feel, and involve you in the lives of compelling characters and their worlds. And it will make you think, and not just about fantasy worlds. And that is an impressive achievement for any work of fiction, and especially so for a video game. If that's something that you'd like to experience, buy this game. You won't regret it.
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