ElfstoneGuild Master
Posts : 5892
Joined: 4 NOV 2002
Status : Online | The real follow-up in spirit to Return to Mysterious Island had my greatest expectations...did it deliver?
Story
The story is loosely based on Jules Verne (I think, because I never read anything by Jules Verne ). Your goal is quite clear from the moment on you land on the moon: getting away from there
Aside from that there is precious little story.
B
Characters
Most of them are Selenites, Lunar beings. And a rooster. I really liked the Selenites, especially how they "talked". That was a great idea, I think and they even put in some humor in form of certain tunes you will recognize, suddenly popping up in a speech. Very funny.
B+
Graphics/Animation
Beautiful scenery, certainly not as "realistic" as RTMI for obvious reasons. I would like it there, I think. The character animation is fine. Some movements look not that smooth, but that's not an important aspect of this game, really.
A-
Music/Sound
Again, I don't remember any music, totally forgot about if there was music or not. I think most of the time it was just ambience and machinery sounds. And of course the Selenites talking. Synch was very good. Sure, the Selenites were quite easy to synch. But feedback from the protagonist was fine.
B+
Controls/Gameplay
For this kind of game just about perfect. The inventory is child's play, really easy to use, although it is massive. I used almost all the registers, dividing them up by Earth stuff, Selenite stuff, food, plant stuff, minerals, etc., never losing track of what I put where. Item combinations are plentiful and they are stored this time so that you can see what you created so far.
Although you have to collect some items multiple times, running around isn't much of a problem as you can create shortcuts and the locations are not far and wide. That was somewhat of a nuisance for me in RTMI, though. I thought the idea of precision jumping was a fun addition, especially since you can miss and try again from the same spot right after you do. And once you completed a specific jump you won't have to do it again. The game just saves your effort and lets you move without any more bothering. Generally, there are many ways to die in this game, but you are automatically set back to before it happened, no harm done. I actually tried to die in every way I could think of just to see what the game would say.
If they keep this system or even improve it I will be a happy gamer.
A
Puzzles
There is a wide variation of puzzles in Voyage: item combination (a huge part, of course), machinery, language and math based puzzles, some arcade elements which are really not intrusive at all and what is best, there is that Nintendo-feeling when you collect keys and other things to progress in certain points that were blocked when you first got there. Not everything turned out to be a new path, though. Some of them are just helpers with puzzles (I didn't really need). Help for one puzzle in particular made no sense in the progression of the game. Although it's possible you didn't solve it, I can't imagine why someone would need even two hints to make it...whatever.
I especially enjoyed the "Nintendo-feeling" as I said and the language and symbol puzzles. None of the puzzles are hard or unfair. You can figure out everything by yourself (at least what's needed to meet the goal...there are some things I never solved, though...that's for the next run).
As in RTMI there is a score in this game which encourages you to replay it for maximum and minimum points. But contrary to RTMI, picking up items doesn't increase the counter any more. Solving puzzles and manipulating machines increases the so-called Selenite IQ. And it will increase faster than you might think.
I was happy to see this feature in Voyage as well. I will definitely try to beat the game with the highest and lowest score possible.
In a few words: give me more of this, Kheops and I will always love you and praise you!
A
Final Mark
I'm using the 30-20-50 for 3 categories with 2 parts each in order (juices - presentation - mechanics) for this game, because puzzles are clearly most important in this kind of game.
juices: 11*0.3 = 3.3
presentation: 12*0.2 = 2.4
mechanics: 14*0.5 = 7.0
total: 12.7 -> 13 -> A-
Add my personal fun factor and you end up with a solid A.
And yes, taking the usual 40-20-40 scheme would have given a B+ and I'm so not giving this game any less than an A-grade...
[b]playing[/b]: Destination Treasure Island (done in two sittings, but it's nice), Syberia (ho-hum), Dracula: Last Sanctuary (on hold)&&[b]reading[/b]: even more study papers&&[b]listening to[/b]: [url=http://www.last.fm/user/Brax82/]this and that[/url], plus [url=http://www.musicovery.com/]Musicovery[/url]&&[b]TV favorites[/b]: (currently) Pushing Daisies, Chuck, Journeyman (cancelled! grrr...), Heroes&& all-time) 24, Stargate SG1, X-Files, Lost, House
|
