The Longest Journey

The story. You play an 18 year old art student called April Ryan who lives in a 23rd century city called Newport, in a little neighbourhood called Venice. Life is pretty much the same as today apart from holosculptures, cops with exoskeletons and DNA scanners on subways. But weird things are happening in Venice. April's dreams are becoming more and more vivid, strange creatures appear in the local cafe and the only person who seems to know what to do is the mysterious old man, Cortez.

Through him April learns there are two Earths, one - her own - called Stark, the other Arcadia. One is science and logic, the other chaos and magic, and both have been held in Balance for eons. But now the Balance is crumbling. The Guardian has left his Tower, the malignant Vanguard are advancing and the only person who can save the worlds from being torn apart is April, who learns a strange gift called Shifting - passing from Stark to Arcadia and back again.

She embarks on a journey from the depths of an Arcadian ocean to the space station in Stark in her quest to not only heal the Balance but to find out who she really is, and why.

So why is this game so great?

First, it has deep, believeable characters with nary a stereotype or cutout in sight. Every person in TLJ has their own personality and enjoys it to the fore. April herself grows as a person during the game, which is unusual for a female heroine, and her history and character become more and more important as the game progresses. And somehow she never loses her sense of humour, whatever happens.

The story is engrossing and amazing with plenty of great twists. I got on a roll playing this and found myself desperate to carry on at midnight just to find out what happened next.

The graphics and cutscenes are just incredible. The whole game is beautifully rendered. Although the 3D characters don't always mesh too well with the 2D background, they look stunning. Arcadia is very beautiful but Stark has its moments as well, especially where the cutscenes are concerned.

The music is hauntingly lovely, and suits the game perfectly. Most of the emotion in the game is portrayed through the sound and music.

Two useful little extras if you're stuck are the Conversation Log and April's diary. You can read both to help you sift for clues as to what to do next, but in actual fact the game is pretty linear so you rarely get stuck for long.

The only things I would caution about this game are the language and the dialogue. A couple of the Stark characters turn the air blue which may be realistic but not suitable for younger children. There is also plenty of social awareness in the game, which is great but also may not be suitable. PG 13 would be a good rating for TLJ. The dialogue does also tend to go on a bit at times, and though it might contain important clues your eyes do tend to glaze sometimes.

All that aside, you won't regret buying this game. It's funny, touching, inspiring and beautiful.


Great story with a great sense of humor!   January 4, 2001
Malawar
27 out of 28 found this review helpful

I purchased The Longest Journey after having read review after review saying it was one of the best Adventure games ever. But the reviews of the game could not truly capture what it was about the game that makes it such an excellent work of art.

1) The characters come to life. You will find yourself getting involved with all of the characters. You will get to know them very well.. probably too well. The voice acting of the characters is fantastic, and you really feel like these computer generated characters are real people.

2) A great sense of humor. You are pretty much guaranteed a good laugh or two every few minutes of gameplay. The first night of playing this game, I found myself laughing almost constantly. There are a couple of parts in the story where the humor builds up so much that you will laugh non-stop for the entire conversation! I am a big fan of comedy, but never has a game made me laugh so hard.

3) The graphics are amazing. The characters could use a bit of work, but the backgrounds are all fantastic, as well as the movies.

If you are buying this for your children, beware, as the content is very mature. But if you're buying it for yourself, and you like adventure games, you will surely enjoy this one.

The combination of wonderful voice acting, great comedy, and beautiful videos depict one of the greatest stories of any computer game to date.


The Adventures Of A Lifetime !   October 23, 2000
Nick (Singapore)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

There must be a good reason why the original game, which was extremely popular in Norway, was made into serveral languages. the obvious reason that is is the GREATEST !

Unlike most adventure games, this isn't a " Myst Clone" type. Instead it is the traditional " point and click " adventure game.

You play April Ryan, an 18 year-old smart mouth art student. She discovers that she is a shifter, able to "shift" between two graphically beautifully designed world of Stark ( a world of technology and logic ) and Arcadia ( a world of fantasy and magic ). Along the way you will meet an array of interesting characters and solve many clever puzzles.

This is a game with a fantastic storyline that is well integrated into the game not like most games that are made today.

The original music score, the funny conversations and the excellent voice acting makes this one game worth playing and waiting for.

One major set back is the long and sometimes boring conversations you will have with the characters. But each conversation that you make will be recorded, which is quite useful. Overall this game is not suitable for anyone who few offended by foul language but it is definately and should be, the best game of the year. Why not try the demo?


Please may them stop talking!   May 2, 2002
DFE (Lake Forest, CA USA)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful

If you have ever had the experience of forcing yourself through a book that you weren't particularly enjoying, but felt compelled to finish, you know how I feel at this moment having just completed the Longest Game - err Journey. Well it was not really the longest game - about 40 hours total - it just seemed that way.

If you have played any of the classic adventure games, Kings Quest, Monkey Island etc. . ., you know the drill. Slowly move your cursor over every scene looking for the stuff you can click on. Talk to everyone you meet as long as there is new dialogue to hear. Run back and forth through the same screens over and over again so you can use object 'a' on person 'b' to get object 'c'. Try combining every item in your inventory with every other item no matter how silly it seems in the hope of producing a new object that you can use on person 'd' to get object 'e'. This is the same dull, I mean fun stuff to be expected from any adventure game and this one rarely breaks with tradition.

One nice difference it adds is that you can never die and even better yet, you can never get into a situation in which there is no way to progress from your current save game and are forced to restore to earlier saves looking for the point where you took the wrong path. You may get stumped by a couple of the very illogical puzzles, but you can rest assured that all of the pieces to the solution are available. This very linear game will never let you into another area of the game unless you have everything you need or still have access to the areas you need to gather them. Big plus.

However the game manages to create a brand new flaw that will no doubt serve as a warning to future game designers. It has endless dialogue. Eyes glaze over endless dialogue. Shout at the characters to just shut up already endless dialogue. And you will need to listen to all of it (or hit escape repeatedly to fast forward through it) to solve the game, because repeatedly you will be required to elicit a certain line from a character, before you can access another part of the game or get needed information from another character. This single flaw, destroyed most of my enjoyment of the game and drives it down to the level of just ok.

Bottom line. If you love adventure games you will probably be willing to overlook the endless talk and appreciate the game's many virtues, nice graphics, wonderful voice acting, strong storyline, varied locals and well defined characters. If you don't like adventure games, don't be fooled by all of the rave reviews. Its charms are unlikely to appeal to those who don't like the genre.


Simply Amazing   November 26, 2000
21 out of 22 found this review helpful

I don't write reviews very often. This game had me enthralled in a way not many adventure games do (my favorite genra). From start to finish I couldn't put the mouse down.

If you liked games like Grim Fandango or Black Dahlia, Curse of Monkey Island, you simply have no choice but to buy this game. It's been a very long time since a game of this caliber came out. In fact, I think I'd have to go back to Grim Fandango to think of a game that was this good. But I think this was better.

Maybe it's because this game had a year to stew before the US got its hands on it, but I had absolutely no problems with bugs. I didn't need a patch. The voices can be choppy at times, but not horribly so...and the game more than makes up for this problem.

The voice acting was incredible. The graphics were extremely well done. And the story...oh the story. There is a lot of dialogue, which I normally don't care for. But the lines are interesting, well acted, and made you care for all the characters, April especially. There is a humanness to all the characters, even non human.

If you are an adventure fan and can only buy one game in the next two months, let it be The Longest Journey.