Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

The Good
The story. This is really a novel in game form, and everything takes a back seat to the story. The game comes on six CDs, probably because it includes so many lengthy cutscenes. The story is long for a game (as was The Longest Journey), and takes the time to build up properly.

The characters. It's rare to see a game with significant character development, but Dreamfall takes the time to do it. There are a few scenes that could have come across as cheesy, but since we've traveled with the characters and sympathize with them, they work.

The scenery. As in the Myst games, many of the game locations are beautiful, and you just want to wander around and gawk (which you're free to do).

The Bad
It's too easy. As I said, everything takes a back seat to the story, and this includes the gameplay: there are precious few puzzles, and none of them are very hard. The only time I had to consult a walkthrough, it turned out that I had the right idea, but wasn't doing it in just the way that the game wanted. In some cases, the "game" consists in nothing more than getting a plot point from one cutscene, then walking across town to watch the next cutscene.

Linearity. The story of Dreamfall is told in one particular way, and the player has to follow along. Consequently, there's only one thing to do at any time. As a corollary, if you get stuck on one task, you're stuck. Unlike a game like The Secret of Monkey Island, there's nothing else to work on.

The interface. Unlike The Longest Journey, Dreamfall is a third-person 3-D environment. This means that you can now look around in all directions, but comes with some problems. The camera tries to be smart, and swivels around the main character rather unpredictably. At the same time, movement is camera-relative, not character-relative, so if you have Zoë walk toward you, and the camera swivels to avoid a wall or something, you'll find that she's now walking at a right angle to the way you want her to go.

Combat. Yes, this is an adventure game that includes some combat scenes, and your character can die. But if he or she does, the game gives you a chance to try again. I'm not a big fan of timed sequences in adventure games (where you have a limited amount of time to complete some action), since I prefer puzzles that make me think, rather than test my agility; and the combat sequences in Dreamfall have all of the disadvantages of timed sequences, doubled.

The graphics. Yes, I know I said the scenery is beautiful. But it's also 3-D, which means that everything has to be rendered in real time as textured polygons. If this had been a node-based game, they could have prerendered the scenes in a lot more detail (compare Myst: Uru to, say, Riven to see what I mean).

The voice acting. Most of the actors give decent performances, but a few were just bad (yeah, I'm talking about you, French magic-user!).

The ending. There's going to be a sequel to Dreamfall, and this couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tacked on "To be continued..." at the end.

The Bottom Line
Well worth playing, IMHO. The story is engaging, and the characters reasonably three-dimensional. The game is long enough to let us know the characters and empathize with them. Just don't expect challenging puzzles, or even a lot of gameplay.

The Good
I liked everything in this game. This is one of the most genius games created ever and it was a perfect sequel. Some sequels out there forget how the areas looked in the prequel (like Diablo 2) and that will result in a mess. Dreamfall did not make that mistake. I completely recognized all the places from the prequel and that was most satisfying.

The characters were beautifully made and when I started this game for the first time I completely fell in love with Zoë as a character. The game was long and you could sit and play the game for a day without getting tired of it. The changing of the environments are the best I've seen.

This game was like watching a 15-20 hours long movie (though one of the best movies I've ever seen)

The Bad
The only thing that I even thought about was that you didn't actually play that much if you compare to the first one. Not too much of a challenge, but everything else in the game did actually compensate that without problem.

The Bottom Line
I would say this is one of the best games I've ever played. The game is perfect (except that it's not too hard), the music is wonderful and fits the game perfect, the story is stunning, the graphics are beautiful, the characters are unique, even the citizens.

Well I'm completely shocked how this game affected me and I will never forget this ever! If it would have been a little more challenging I would have given it 100/100, but now 95/100!

The Good
April Ryan returns in the sequel to The Longest Journey, along with two new characters to control, Zoë Castillo and Kian. You'll actually be controlling Zoë for about half the game. There's several characters and locations that will be familiar if you played the first game, but a lot has changed in the ten years since the first adventure, the story however is as developed as ever and the gaps will be filled in as you meet old friends and foes, and that's what this game is essentially all about, story, it's a game excuse for telling a reasonably long story, and it's told with a bit of film style directing.

And it's fun, sitting back and relaxing and listening to the conversations and watching the cutscenes is, well, relaxing. There's conversation options, which affect what you say or how you say it, they’ll be a descriptive sentence telling the thoughts of the character you happen to be controlling under each option, which is typically one word, such as a persons name or a reaction. It's not too involving, and everything ends up in the same place, Dreamfall is an extremely linear game, but it adds a flavour of variety.

There's the obligatory spooky girl ala The Ring / F.E.A.R. who visits Zoë via visions and TV screens, she has seemingly infiltrated ‘The Wire’, which is a worldwide network that everything is connected to (undies, toasters etc), the concept is certainly feasible, you'll even be using a mobile phone to keep in contact with friends and family (and hack corporate security systems).

Tapping the right mouse button lights up a blue line of sight beam from your character's toes to the top of the screen which can then be swept left and right highlighting any objects of interactivity or comment-worthiness.

The sets can be large and are usually quite pretty.

There’s combat, a strong attack, a normal attack, and the ability to block. Dreamfall’s combat has received a lot of criticism, or at least some people may be questioning it’s inclusion, and I can see why. I did however enjoy knocking out that secretarial security woman near the beginning of the game, and afterwards was as surprised as Zoë that the whole thing had actually happened!

The Bad
Although the sets can be large and usually quite pretty they're not very interactive, for example there’s only one pub that you can actually enter in Marcuria, despite their being several other establishments as just scenery with signs and front doors and all the indications of something actually being there, but with no way of interacting with them.

Like in the first game the conversations can drag a little and seem a little ordinary on occasions, though there's a decent story here too - and one that's told from perspectives of several characters (player and npc's alike).

The voice acting for Zoë is very bland with only the slightest hint of occasional emotion, I kid you not, I began to think that maybe it was the script, but other characters, some returning from the first game, do a much better job.

The Bottom Line
Dreamfall ends on a cliff hanger, it's essentially half a story, and half a story I enjoyed very much, I've had my Sunday roast now I want my crumble and custard and coffee by the fire, and a tale or two to finish the evening off. What I mean to say is that there are very few loose ends tied off, if any, there's going to be a sequel, and I'm looking forward to it.

P.S.

Make sure you let the credits roll, as there’s a final scene at the end.