Journey to the Center of the Earth

Details: Category: Computer; By ccgr; 01.Jun; Hits: 7959

System Requirements Windows 98/Me/2000/XP 500Mhz or higher 64MB RAM 16MB DX 8 compatible video card 700MB free space

Story

You are Ariane, a young photojournalist with a budding career, hoping for the scoop of her lifetime. On your trip to Iceland a rockslide ruins your helicopter and opens up an entrance to the center of the earth. Well, are you going to just sit and wait for help, or check it out?

What does the center of the earth look like?

According to this game the center of the earth is not just dirt and magma. You will find human and giant civilizations. Dinosaurs are still alive and well down there too! The most surprising thing to me was the water and unique sky that the center of the earth has. There is a lot to explore, but you have to find your way back to the surface!

What do I do down there?

In order to get help from the people there you will often find yourself doing errands for them to gain their favor. Many of the townspeople are afraid of war on the surface and people coming to the center of the earth for refuge. This all seems strange because everything was peaceful before you fell down there. Throughout your journey you?ll have to unravel this conspiracy and ease the townspeople?s fears.

Watch your back!

Although many of the people are friendly and welcome you, there are some people that you?ll run into that are not so nice. Be careful not to find yourself being blamed for some of the problems going on. You?ll have to prove your innocence and keep your heart and motives pure.

Puzzles

Like most adventure games there are lots of puzzles for you to solve. This game has many that are pretty logical and others that test your patience/IQ. There is a certain sound puzzle in this game that is a bit of a pain to solve and those that are hard of hearing will have a disadvantage.

Graphics

The world is beautifully designed and detailed. There are many movie scenes, which add a very nice touch to the game. It?s generally pretty easy to find and manipulate the necessary objects, though there was a couple that required reloading a save or two. The interface can use a couple of tweaks. The town layout is a tad confusing and it?s hard to get to some of the areas. Another thing worth noting is that sometimes it?s hard to find the right hotspots to get Ariane to move to the next area. Overall the graphics are nicely done and don?t require a monster 3D card to run smoothly.

Sound

The voice acting is quite good. As usual there are a couple of voices that are annoying, but most of them give the side characters enough personality to love them or hate them. The ambient sounds are good and the theme music is very peaceful.

Appropriateness

This game is pretty clean but there are some things worth mentioning. The giants in the game are very spiritual beings. They believe heavily in magic, nature and enlightenment. You are required to solve a couple of puzzles in their ?valley of spirits?. There is some tobacco use in the game and also some mild swearing.

Overall

This game is easy to install and play. You pretty much just use the mouse to click and explore your surroundings. The game ran very stable and alt-tabs very nicely. If you are tired of waiting for Ariane to walk around, double click to make her run! I would highly recommend this game to any adventure gamer. It reminded me a lot of The Longest Journey except without most of the swearing. Maybe it was because of the female heroine. I?m not sure. ;) There are two possible endings to this game. You can duck out early and boost your career or put an end to the conspiracy and restore peace in the underworld.