Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time is the third game in the
greatly respected Journeyman Project series from San Diego-based Presto
Studios. It’s the continuing adventures of Gage Blackwood, Special Agent 5 of
the Temporal Security Agency.

The first game, The Journeyman Project,
originally released for Mac back in 1992, was one of the first (if not the
first) photorealistic adventure games, told the story of the first uses of
the new time travel technology and its political ramifications with regard to
Earth’s joining the Symbiotry, an intergalactic group of races that had invited
Earth to join its fellowship. The Temporal Security Agency is a governmental agency
that protects history from the effects of rash time travel. By bouncing around
in time, Gage Blackwood foiled sabotage and assassination attempts and saved the
day.

The second game, Buried in Time, is the story of how Gage is
framed by another TSA agent and how he cleared his name and once again saved humanity.
Helping Gage in his quest was Arthur, a wise-cracking but brilliant Artificial
Intelligence that Gage rescued from a doomed space station.

The third game
begins with the villain from Buried in Time wandering around the Mediterranean
in the 13th Century BC. Arthur is with her (you’ll have to play the second game
to find out how), and it turns out she may just not be a bad guy after all …

Cut
to the TSA. It seems the Symbiotry has ordered the shutdown of the TSA. Just at
this moment, an inexplicable battle seems to be breaking out between two of the
alien races in the vicinity of Earth. Gage is contacted by the “villain,”
who claims she can help him resolve the conflict. Against TSA orders, Gage grabs
an experimental new jumpsuit and heads off into the past.

This is a brilliant
setup, told with a series of beautiful cinematic scenes. As in all of the Journeyman
Project games, the writing is simply superior to the standard for our genre.
Particularly well-done in JP3 is the way in which the stories of all three
games dovetail together. It’s a great payoff if you’ve played the whole series.

Another
thing I immediately admired about JP3 was the seamless way the player is
introduced to the mechanics of gameplay. Since Gage is using an experimental new
time travel jumpsuit, it makes total narrative sense that his friend will first
show him how to use it. The result is that adventure game ideal–a game that never
requires you to even open the manual.

Visually, this is one of the most
beautiful games I’ve ever played. Gage travels to El Dorado, Shangri-La, and Atlantis,
and each is a feast of visual wonders. Now, any adventure gamer who’s been around
the block a few times has been to Atlantis more than once while playing adventure
games. The Atlantis of JP3 is hands-down the best-looking and most convincing
Atlantis I’ve ever visited.

Because of the jumpsuit and time travel technology,
the interface of the Journeyman Project games has never been as simple
as many other adventure games. However, with each game in the series, Presto has
made the interface easier and more elegant. And in this third game, the view window
is much larger than it was in the first two games.

In the first two games,
one of the limitations of the time travel technology was that you could never
let yourself be seen by someone in another time. You had to either hide or use
a special chip in your suit to render you invisible when a “native”
was in the vicinity.

In Legacy of Time, there’s a whole new wrinkle
to your exploration due to a cool feature in the new “chameleon” suit.
This time around, you can “steal” the image of any person you meet,
and then later cloak yourself in a holographic projection of that image. In other
words, you can walk around and interact with people for the first time.

I
never minded the lack of interaction in the first two games (I liked the idea
of sneaking around without being seen), but fans of character interaction will
be quite pleased by this new development. What’s even more interesting is that
since you can assume many different personas, it becomes a point of strategy when
you decide to approach a character: will I get more out of this person if he thinks
I’m a priest? His sister? The jolly ferryman? The poor beggar? This adds a fascinating
element to gameplay.

Like its predecessors, JP3 is not particularly
linear, meaning there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing from one location in time
to another–you don’t finish one, then go to the next–you’re working on all three
of the locations at once. I played the DVD version of this game, and this made
a huge difference. There would be a considerable amount of disk-swapping in the
CD version.

Speaking of the time travel, another welcome improvement in
JP3 is that, when you jump to a time location that you’ve visited before,
you are deposited geographically right where you left off. In Buried in Time,
you could only return to a fixed “starting place,” which added a lot
of frustrating running around.

The format of the game is first-person point-and-click,
with 360-degree panning and beautifully animated “steps.” I can’t say
enough about the loveliness of the graphics in this game. The environments are
so pretty it’s a pleasure to wander around in them.

A visual detail in JP3
that I really appreciated, because I’ve never seen it in any other
game, was the way an intense light source would “flare” in your eye
if you looked at it directly. In other words, if you looked straight up and stared
at the sun, the sun did just what it does in real life–fill your vision with
blinding yellow light. A very nice touch.

The characters are all filmed
actors, and with the sad exception of the handsome but wooden lead, the performances
are excellent. (Long live video!)

This game would actually get a better
review from me if it was a standalone title. However, the cold hard fact is that
it is haunted by the ghost of its brilliant predecessor, JP2: Buried in Time.
As good and good-looking as JP3 is, it is in no way a superior game
to the second in the series. It’s much shorter and easier. JP2 was one
of the richest, most generous, and fascinating games I’ve ever played (it’s on
my top ten list). If JP2 was a beefsteak feast, JP3 is a lovely
dish of trifle.

However, that still makes it better than most adventure
games out there, and I heartily recommend it, especially for novice gamers. It’s
very inviting and user-friendly, and it could make and adventure fan out of anyone.

I
don’t know if, after their Myst 3: Exile duties are done, the talented
team at Presto will ever consider building a new Gage Blackwood adventure, but
I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But I’ll hope that they use JP2, not JP3,
as the model for the next game.

Final Grade: B

If you
liked Legacy of Time:
Watch: Back to the Future 1, 2, and
3
Read: The Big Time by Fritz Lieber
Play: Journeyman
Project 1 and 2, of course!

System Requirements:

PC: Windows
95 required (works with Windows98 with audio acceleration turned off)
Pentium
processor, 90 MHz or faster
16 MB RAM
4x CD-ROM drive or faster
70
MB free hard disk space
640×480 display, high color (16-bit)
Sound Blaster
16 or 100% compatible 16-bit sound card
Video and sound cards must be compatible
with DirectX

Macintosh:
PowerPC processor
required
80 MHz or faster recommended
System 7.5 or higher
16 MB RAM
(10 MB free)
2x CD-ROM or faster (4x recommended)
60 MB free hard disk
space
640×480 display, thousands of colors (users with the latest graphics
accelerators should set the game display mode to “line doubling” under
the FILE:OPTIONS menu for best compatibility)
Support for 16-bit stereo sound