The Longest Journey

I'm annoyed whenever I spend more on stuff than it turns out I have to. It happens sometimes with games. I bought Shadow of the Colossus at full price, and before I got around to playing it, it was re-released as a Greatest Hits title, so I essentially paid $20 for non-hideous packaging. Does anyone think that red color looks good? What happened with the Longest Journey games wasn't as bad but it was still annoying. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was put on Steam for $30 and I jumped on a 10% discount because I was interested in it. A couple months later, my hopes to play the prequel were made easier by its own release on Steam, but it was in a deal with Dreamfall for $25 total, so I ended up paying much more than I had to if I just waited a bit. Oh well, it happens some times.

Being a point-and-click adventure game, The Longest Journey focuses on storytelling over gameplay. There's a lot of running around, discussions, and puzzle solving. As I gave an example of in an earlier post, a lot of puzzles involve bizarre leaps of logic and item hunting, but it's all fun when you figure it out. Usually the game is good about letting you know what to do next, but sometimes it either doesn't make it clear enough or just doesn't tell you, which can lead to confusion. You know what your next goal is, but before it gets triggered you have to go somewhere or do something else, and it can lead to wasted time going back and forth.

The graphics are strange in their duality. The backgrounds and environments are a mixture of photographs, hand drawings, and pre-rendered computer images, and look generally very nice. The real-time character models however, are terrible. They're extremely low resolution, are usually poorly animated, and don't interact with each other or the environment well. This is forgivable for three reasons, though. The game was originally released seven years ago, when most games looked bad; it's not an action game that requires accurate interactions to work; and the art direction and visual design are strong enough that you can appreciate it anyway.

The story and writing are really very good. What's quickly noticeable is how funny the game is. Dreamfall had a few wise-cracking characters (mostly who were introduced here), but it was a mostly serious game that focused on its dramatic story. April Ryan is a much more quirky and light-hearted heroine than Zoe or her future, hardened self from Dreamfall. Her grounded sense of humor permeates the whole game, and the epic story doesn't seem worse for it. Speaking of the storyline, it's quite interesting, telling the tale of a world with two opposite halves, one a vision of earth in the future, the other a land of fantasy. A new group has come to disrupt the delicate balance, and April has to explore both worlds to find what she needs to stop them. The pacing is generally very good - like Dreamfall did, it starts a bit slow but can grab you and pull you forward until it ends before you know it. I only had one problem. Near the end, the pace has been accelerating for a while and you can feel it coming to a climax soon, but you end up having to dawdle around on a space station for a while before you get to the last area. Despite that and a few other hiccups, The Longest Journey is one of the better experiences you'll have with an engrossing story in a game. I'm looking forward to the episodic conclusion to the whole saga that was announced in May.