Just wrapped up Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time.
The short review: Wow! Go play this game!
Longer review with spoilers: Enjoyed this game quite a BiT! The puzzles were excellent and mostly logical. The story was really very good with a great ending – when you finally did make it to the end, as there are about 117 ways to die in this game! Good acting and lots of little extras to play with in the game, [like the toys in future Gage's apartment]. And wasn't that answering machine a mind-blower?
The alien spaceship was truly alien. Wonderful design.
There were also a few annoyances. One of the strongest points of the game was also one of its most maddening: the ability to do the bulk of the game, the 4 past time zones, in any order. I often play parts of games over again for the enjoyment, but that proved to be my undoing this time. I completed the castle section first, but neglected to grab some gold coins in the secret storage room the 2nd time. I didn't realize this until I was back under the Mayan pyramid with everything else that I needed to get through the doors down there. I thought I could just jump back to the castle, but when I got to the storage room, I opened the chest, but all that happened was that I was shown the bottom of an empty chest, and then the camera zoomed back out again! I thought it was a bug at first, but then I realized that there was no reason for a screen shot of an empty chest's bottom to be in there, so I realized they're were purposely keeping me out of the storage room. Why is the world would they do this? You can't complete the game without the gold coins, and yet you only get one chance to grab them. So I had to do over half the game over again, which was really the third or fourth time for most of it because I had played most sections a few times already. AARRGHHH!
Arthur was also a BiT annoying. Most, but not all, of his jokes fell flat I thought. And it really shattered the idea that he was from 23rd Century when most of his jokes related to the 20th Century. Are Bob Villa [referred to
twice!], Tales from the Crypt, and Monty Python really going to be that well known 300 years from now? And his crack in da Vinci's courtyard about “No, you can't go over there or otherwise we'll never finish this game” certainly broke the spell of actually living this adventure.
I was thrilled to pieces to be able to root around in da Vinci's workshop, but it was far, far too dark in there. Our helmet had a light on it, as we saw in the castle storage room, where the heck is its button!?
[Did you use the Translator Chip over the workman's bench: “You toucha my tools, I breaka your face!]
I still don't understand that "open-air' maze encountered on the first trip to the space station, in the room with the green glowing pads while Arthur is taunting you. I had to consult a w/t there because I couldn't figure out what was going on.
It's really a shame that the view screen could not be made bigger. I don't know if I would have enjoyed this game nearly as much if I to play it on smaller than 17 inch monitor [I have a 19 inch].
Even some of my most basic arcade games automatically go full screen when I start them, yet I always had to manually reset the resolution when I restarted this. Does anyone have an idea why? I would think it'd just be a simple line of programming to have it go full screen for you when you fire it up.
I didn't look at the walkthough mode, but I'm sure that was handy for beginning gamers. The recap of the first game in the manual was also a nice touch.
So, while I did not get
$65 worth of fun out of this game, it was still a blast and highly recommended!
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