The Journeyman Project: Turbo!

The Good
TJP is an historical document of the first bold steps of game designers towards the field of multimedia and movie-making, thanks to the newly available CD medium. Jaw-dropping technologies are there: 3D rendered environment, FMV sequences and speech dialogues voiced by actors.

The game is brief compared to other adventures, and may seem outdated now, but has things to offer although it gives a promising scenario and an enjoyable experience, with an adequately rich backstory with some intrigue.

The controls are easy and pose no problem. Gameplay resembles the 'slide-show' of Myst but here you move with the cursor keys in invisible square positions and have a realistic sense of freedom.

The riddles and puzzles are quite straightforward and I guess they won't frustrate you much. Personally I solved the whole game without a walkthrough, which is generally a good thing. There is exploration and investigation for you to make, and several challenging trial-and-error points but nothing worse than that.

In the course of the game you obtain bio-chips which provide your gameplay with more features and help you solve some puzzles and pass some points, like retinal scanners. Some are optional, some are used only once. Furthermore, there are some arcade sequences, mind puzzles and mazes.

And there is more! When you finish the game you get your score. You will find out that there are two ways to defeat each of the big nasty androids. Can you find the way you did not follow? Did you explore all of the world? Did you find all the bio-chips? Did you try to complete the missions in a different order? In my opinion this scoring system encourages replayability and exploration.

Personally I liked the cheesy futuristic scenery, with a peaceful humanity, floating cities, androids, aliens, chip interfaces and A.I. bio-suits. The plot is centered around time travel and first contact with aliens, two sci-fi elements which are rarely combined.

The loneliness common in Myst games is also there. You will see no characters to interact with, excepting the three bad robots. The scenario is sophisticated enough to justify this unrealistic condition: your apartment is empty because everyone is out to meet the alien delegation. When you are back in time, you are obliged to be stealthy so that you won't interfere with history.

The Bad
The game suffers by the same flaws that plagued many early CD games of the 90s. One can see an over-enthusiasm for this new groundbreaking medium and TJP shows its cheesy ambition to be the forerunner of this glorious new era.

One of the consequences of that fad was the attempt to force the game into the movie genre. This silly notion urged the designers to have dialogues and cut-scenes with no text. "We now have enough medium to record whole lines of speech; so who needs typing and reading, right?" Well, couple this with the poor sample quality and you will have quite some trouble understanding what you hear. Especially if you are NOT a native English speaker.

The other problem is that the many adventure gamers won't be satiated by the short storyline, the simplistic interface and the less than challenging puzzles. Its philosophy is 'just find what you should do so that you can explore further our wonderful 3d world and story we made for you'. This lack of duration and depth is supposedly compensated by the sensual immersion in the (now outdated) multimedia experience. I just think that TJP uses ideas that other games have implemented in more sophisticated way.

And of course, not to forget the unavoidable animations. From the monologue video sequences to the slow-working inventory, especially the bio-chip slot, complete with this unfolding-folding animation. Can be a real pain when you are trying or repeating some moves.

The Bottom Line
Practically a Myst-clone, although it was released around the same time as Myst did. The main points that make a Myst game are there: slide-show first person interface, a nameless-speechless protagonist (although you can see your face in the mirror), a full 3D-pre-rendered environment, some FMVs, limited interactivity, moody loneliness and a backstory for you to uncover from clues here and there. The structure is also similar: you begin in the 'hub', you choose the 'world' you want to visit in an optional order, you return to the 'hub' etc etc

It won't impress you much; although groundbreaking back then, I guess it would be considered primitive by the next couple of years eg. compared to sequel Buried in Time. The story and the puzzles are not challenging or original and I was surprised when I realized how soon I completed my missions; by the time I had to find the bad guy, I thought that the missions I went to were too brief and few.

But hey, TJP is entertaining and replayable. Just try to visit eras in a different order and use bio-chips in places you haven't

All in all it is a must-see introduction to the Journeyman series. Novice adventure gamers will enjoy it as well as all enthusiasts of the early 90s multimedia games.