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Dreamfall
By admin | August 29, 2010
I came home on a Friday night when I noticed a package had come in the mail. When I picked the strange box up. It almost seemed to glow in my hand. I slowly removed the packaging to reveal the relic that lay inside. I reached in the bag and the tip of my finger touched a smooth box. The second My finger came in contact with it I felt a strange charge surge through my body. I slowly pulled the box out and I laid eyes on Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. I stared at the hypnotic artwork on the box. Then my wife grabbed it from me. She decided that the game was now her’s. I grabbed a beer(My friday night ritual) and sat down at the desk. I noticed that the game was 6 cd’s. Why companies refuse to use Dvd is beyond me.
Once the installation was completed we were greeted with a beautiful opening movie and the game began. The first thing I noticed was the beautiful graphics. They were not Quake 4 quality but highly detailed and colorful.The sound was also quite grabbing as well.
The main character in the game is Zoe Castillo. A young college student that broke up with her boyfriend and dropped out of school to move back in with her dad(she’s one of those huh?) Anyway the first thing you will notice about Zoe is that she enjoys watching TV in her underwear with all of the windows in her room open. This struck me as odd but I went with it. Soon she is haunted by a strange vision of a little girl pleading her to save April Ryan. At first she just dismisses the vision as nothing more then a side effect from her nail polish fumes and goes about her day. The day starts out normal enough but soon goes straight to hell and the adventure gets interesting.
The graphics are beautifully rendered and very expressive. Cloth blowing in the wind looks quite marvelous. The characters are very large and well rendered. Some people might complain about the way the mouths move when the characters are speaking. I did not find this to be a problem. In fact I found the mouth movements to be on par with Doom 3. Some of the areas in the game are quite large and you can see for a very long distance. The level designs make the game look like it takes place in the not so distant future with elements of ancient cultures mixed in aswell. I found the mixture of technology with older looking buildings to be more believable then the environments in most futuristic games.
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The sound is great! I played it with headphones because I felt that gave me the most immersion. The music is very well orchestrated and the sound effects are killer. The production and presentation really deserve praise. The sound effects were realistic and the spatial separation was great. This is very important when wearing headphones because the separation is most apparent when wearing them. The speech sounded very realistic. The tones of the human voice were accurately represented based on the environment. The voice acting was also above average.
The game controls very well. You have a choice of using a mouse and keyboard, just keyboard, or a joypad. I tried it all three ways and the keyboard alone just didn’t cut it. It was great that they gave that option though because some players may appreciate it. The Joystick was my control method of choice. It just felt more natural to use the joystick instead of the mouse and keyboard. The joystick I used was a Playstation Dualshock. The configuration utility was great and easy to use.
Zoe loves talking to her dad while still in her underwear. |
And now more underwear shots. |
The game feels like a cross between a role-playing game and a point and click adventure. Throughout the game you are presented with thew option to interact with other people or your environment. For example you can walk up to the television and turn it on. When you do this Zoe responds with “3 billion hours of entertainment and still nothing on!” I found this to be amusing and made the game even more enjoyable for me. The humor is not over done but rather add3ed to make the game feel for realistic and it succeeds.
When you talk to another character you are given several choices as to what to say and how to act. This adds a great deal of depth to the gameplay. This also happens during an intense action scene you are given a choice on what to do and where to go. This is great compared to a game where you have to goof around for ten minutes to find out what to do. The gameplay is fairly linear but the player is given lots of flexibility so it keeps things enjoyable. You have a task to perform but the player is given a choice as to how that goal is accomplished.
I found this game to be very different and refreshing. If there were more games like this we wouldn’t have to play Mario Party 207 anymore. I know this game is a sequel but it stands very well on it’s own but this game makes me want to go out and get the original. It is also very important to mention that the game is very fast and runs very well on even modest machines. I played it on a 2200 with 512 ram and a geforce4 titanium and it ran on high settings with little or no slow down. If you meet the minimum requirements you will have a very playable and enjoyable experience. Most game companies make the games unplayable on current hardware it is so nice to see a game that is accessible to thsoe that can’t afford to buy a new video card every month. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. It is the only game in a long time that my wife has enjoyed as much(if not more) then I do. A rare Gem don’t miss it!!
Topics: PC Game | No Comments »