The Longest Journey

The Good
When Longest Journey appeared on the stage, it generated a small sensation among adventure fans. Made by a Norwegian developer hitherto focused on console games, it was quickly proclaimed a modern masterpiece, and was frequently mentioned in speeches as argumentation against those who have condemned the genre to death. So, is it really that good? And, more importantly, can it save the adventure genre?

My opinion is that it is a nice game, but certainly not one that can compete with the classic offerings of Legend, Sierra, or LucasArts.

The game is firmly rooted in the existing traditions of adventure-making, most notably echoing the tendency of merging old-school inventory-based gameplay with serious settings and strong, emotionally charged plots rich in lore and characters. As everyone know, Gabriel Knight truly started that trend, and is rightly regarded as a milestone for that. Longest Journey was clearly influenced by that game, as well as perhaps the more recent Grim Fandango, which it resembles in overall structure and aspirations.

The journey is indeed long. The game has a linear story with rather frequent changes of locations; but each area is appropriately large, usually consisting of at least several interconnected screens you can explore. Longest Journey takes you to many interesting places, and it keeps up a good pacing, neither precipitating events and rushing towards the end, nor sticking too much to the same location. The game world is generously designed: there is a variety of indoor and outdoor locations, and most of them are interesting to visit. There are a dozen or so chapters, each focusing on a particular event or task needed to fulfill in either of the two worlds the game is set in. The considerable length of the plot reflects the game's premise of an epic adventure.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of the game is the new world it creates. The central idea of the story - the conflict between science and magic - may not be very original, but it is executed with love and attention to detail. The concept of allowing a normal, ordinary girl to catch a glimpse of a world she had no idea about, making her gradually unravel the truth about it and herself, works here just like it should. Like April Ryan, you discover a new world, surprised by everything you see. The larger part of the game is set in that "other" world, and the feeling of magical, wondrous exploration of the unknown is captured very well.

The developers weren't stingy with material: the game contains loads of information about the world, its history, its characters and concepts, and so on. It's true that the dialogues can get too dry and overly informative; but it is admirable that the designers wanted to cram as much lore as they could into them. In that way, Longest Journey is similar to role-playing games: its star is the universe itself rather than its characters or even concrete events constituting the game's story.

Longest Journey is a beautiful game. Most backgrounds are exquisitely detailed and ooze atmosphere. The Norse love of vast, majestic landscapes serving as potential battlegrounds for an upcoming confrontation between forces beyond our imagination is strongly manifested in this game. It is interesting to note that, although the nature in the game can hardly be called lush or exotic, some of the backgrounds convey an almost mystical, appropriately otherworldy feeling, mesmerizing in their somewhat cold beauty, reminding of pure and transcendental things lost to the futuristic world of soulless skyscrapers and high-speed transportation.

The Bad
The gameplay of Longest Journey is archaic. What's worse, it doesn't really fit the game's ambiance and story. Most puzzles are taken directly from classic comedy adventures of the past (most notably LucasArts' works) and are out of place in this seriously-minded and only mildly and very sporadically humorous game. Predominantly unrealistic and artificial, the game's puzzles involve sterile and awkward inventory item manipulations. They may not be as offensive as their infamous contemporary cat mustache, but they aren't as amusing as that one, either. Besides, this game doesn't have investigations, computer research, or other challenging activities besides inventory combinations and a few isolated logic puzzles.

Some of the inappropriately nonsensical, contrived tasks are at odds not only with the tone of the game, but also with the situations it puts the player in. For example, infiltrating a police station by means of a ridiculously labored concoction ruins the tension of the moment and the seriousness of the event. The game also has a few scenes where the heroine is in mortal danger; yet the ubiquitous "no death" policy turns them into unbecomingly serene affairs. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't think that LucasArtian device was the ultimate cure to the problems of adventure games. I believe that Sierra was on the right track creating potentially dangerous situations for the player instead of holding his hand all the time. This game, in particular, would have benefited from that design philosophy.

Much of the time here is spent on conversations with other characters. Unfortunately, they tend to drag quite a bit. Serving mostly as containers of background information necessary to understand the game's complex story, these dialogues can get very long-winded, often slowing down the game's tempo to a crawl. There are no close-ups on character faces during conversations, so you'll have to just read and occasionally click on a line to trigger the next batch, without having the feeling of really participating. The writing is good, but lacks personality and that extra treatment that made the classics of the past so inimitable.

The Bottom Line
Longest Journey is neither the savior of adventures, nor the innovative, groundbreaking game it so wanted to be. In fact, as an adventure game, it's just above average, falling short of the past greatness it passionately strives to imitate. It can't resurrect the ailing genre, though it does make its agony less painful.

The Good
Likeable main character, nice art and backgrounds, plenty of interesting dialogue and immersive gameplay. The puzzles border on the simplicistic but are consistent with the setting and don't feel forced. The plot is nothing new but moves along smoothly despite being unoriginal. Streamlined and unobtrusive interface that rarely gets in the way. Great Introduction and first part, with very high production values.

The Bad
3D characters lack polygons and don't look very great against the 2D backgrounds, especially in close-ups and cutscenes (that are few, blocky and poorly done). Some of the characters share the same voice actor (that does a poor job of trying to alter his voice) and some sections seem rushed (especially towards the end) with too few locations/things to do. The final part and ending seem hastily done (like the publishers wanted to get the game out of the door asap).

The Bottom Line
A great addition to the adventure games genre and a very engrossing experience.

The Good
Adventure game fans rejoice! The genre isn't dead!

The Longest Journey certain is the "longest" journey I've played. badum-chink! Ahem.

The game is played through a point-and-click method with a pre-rendered background. Similar to Grim Fandango, in many ways, as well as a number of other adventure games dating back to Sierra's golden age in the early 90s, there's nothing so new to the interface that will leave anyone confused.

The graphics are beautiful, especially the pre-rendered backgrounds. There is amazing scenery throughout the game, from the beautiful areas in the near-future Venice to the colorful island with the snoring giant, to outer space, every part of the game you visit is eye candy. The character models aren't that bad, either.

The story I didn't care for - I'll explain why in the "bad" part - but the setting of the human world I love. It's a solid setting. It's in the near-future, with flying cars and other cliche'd sci-fi elements, but it's not so overly done to the point where it's not at all believable.

You'll fall in love with the characters in this game. My favorite part about the "adventure" game genre is that it's less of a game and more of an interactive movie. The characters in this game are all great, with great voice-acting and unique personalities. April, the talking crow, the sailor, the guy at the cafe, each character, those that had a large part and those that didn't, have a place in the story and I'll miss'em.

The game is four discs long, and it is a loooooong journey. Depending how much you like the game, you'll be spending a long time with it. The puzzles are pretty hard, and can take some work to solve.

The game is filled with lots of humor, and after you beat it you can access outtakes and other extras. THAT is a great thing, and more games should do that.

The Bad
Allright, the story is just dumb. The premise of the story - girl dreams of a world, finds out the world is real, goes and saves the universe - has been done before, but it's still a nice idea. Unfortunately, like far too many games of every genre, you can't progress anywhere in the story until you finish running errands for EVERYBODY. It's not the case in every part of the game. In fact, most of the things you do in the game have to do with the story - like placing the monkey in the garbage to fool the guard so you can sneak into the building or something - but there are way too many times when you have to get help from a certain character, but they won't help you until you do them a favor, which leads to another, and another, and another, and another until you've almost forgotten why you needed the guy's help in the first place.

Some of the puzzles aren't very practical at all. Also like most adventure games, every puzzle has but one sollution and there's no other way around it. It's up to you to solve the puzzle, but you can't do it in a practical way. Like, say, you have to fix a broken electrical wire in the subway. Call a technician? No, you have to use a rubber duck (this is actually a part of the game, though I can't remember exactly how it went about). How do you get the rubber duck? You throw gum out the window...maybe in the end, the idea works (use the rubber to ground the electricity or something), but who would ever think to do the things that get it done in the first place?!

At one point of the game, you have to hear a bunch of stories. Allright, now I'm fine with playing a long game that has a lot of different stories to be told, but I'm not up for sitting down and waiting for an hour while a bunch of bird-people tell me about their history. It's a vital part of the story to hear these stories, too.

The entire story of the game, while executed poorly, was good enough to get you by until the very end. Toward the end, the story just went "kaplooey" and left me pretty damned confused.

April is too ditsy to really be taken seriously. Ever. I wouldn't trust her to take care of my cat, let alone two universes.

The FMV cinematics are awful. The in-game characters looked more realistic than April did. In the cinematics, she looks like she has two black eyes and just got beat up. The animation doesn't seem as good as the in-game animation, either, which is pretty dumb. The FMV is there for dramatic effect, but with a little less effect and better animation, it could have been done in-game and produce the same thing.

There's a race in the game that doesn't live on the same "plane of time". Oh shut up. If it could tell the future, it would have been useful to tell me how I end up solving the damned puzzles.

The Bottom Line
Despite my ranting, as an adventure game it is fun. The story's kind of annoying, but the characters - especially the crow - are great. The graphics are wonderful and you'll spend hours and hours in this game. If you're an adventure fan, get it. If not, save yourself the aggrivation.