Adventure gaming has always, in my opinion, been teetering on the edge of oblivion. In the early 80's, it could be well argued that adventure games were the driving force in game development. King's Quest, Police Quest and even the Leisure Suit Larry series (reported to be making a come back, whoohoo!) were the big titles. But as computers and their capabilities advanced, so did the development of newer genres. Interest in adventure games began to fade fast in the mid 90's, and was nearly obliterated altogether with the rise of first-person shooters. A lot of adventure features were also co-opted to other booming genres, like RPG. There were, however, a few titles released that seemed timed perfectly to save the genre from being confined to the annals of history. Alone in the Dark provided ample life-support to the field, ported to many different platforms. But the big turning point came in 1995 with the release of Myst, a simple, visually breathtaking title that had developers in the industry screaming that adventure games were back. Sadly, that was not the case. While Myst was a huge hit, developers did not re-invest much money or time into developing the adventure market. Many games in the adventure genre today (of which there are few) smack of Myst rip-offs. Some, like Syberia, do a great job of capturing what made Myst such a wonderful game to play, While others just hijack the idea without much thought or effort beyond the puzzle design.

Mysterious Journey II (AKA Schizm II, or Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon, depending on where you are) falls right in between those two categories. The storyline and your mission are quite straightforward. You awake on a space station orbiting a destroyed planet. A hologram appears and brings you up to speed: a war that destroyed the planet was your fault, and the space station you have been held on for the last two hundred years is to be your tomb. The space station is falling out of the sky and will burn up in less than 16 days. Down below, one valley is all that is left of the once beautiful planet. In that valley, two warring factions (technocrats and naturalists) continue to this day to fight in an attempt to control the planet and the mysterious alien ship that has crash landed on its surface. You must escape the space station and head to the valley, determined to resolve the conflict. It's a big game (three discs), and a long journey to the end.

Exciting? Well, yes and no. The story itself sounds great on paper; but seems rather boring in execution. Everyone you encounter seems intent on rehashing the same story over and over again, and the story drags on for a long time without moving forward. The linear design of the game lends itself to this boredom. The story doesn't advance until you solve a puzzle... and there are a LOT of puzzles. On average, I'd have to say that every screen you move into has at least one multi-part puzzle that you must solve without any clues, before moving on. Again, this wouldn't be so bad, since this is an adventure/puzzle game, except that the puzzles are damn hard. If it weren't for the walkthrough I found, I honestly wouldn't have made it past the third puzzle (the first is answered in the manual, and the second took about an hour to figure out). Even with the walkthrough, the puzzles are still extremely hard. This is because many of the puzzles have factors that involve math randomly generated by the computer every time you attempt them. For example, a bridge puzzle early in the game requires you to add pieces in order to make it tall enough to walk across. You may add pieces in sets of three, two or one. After you add a section, the computer will randomly generate additional pieces. There's no way to be sure. Puzzles this hard right at the beginning of the game will quickly turn off a lot of people. Puzzles should be fun, not frustrating, because it makes gamers start to NOT look forward to then next one.

Graphically, this game is average, but exhibits signs of having some graphic code issues. While there is a great deal of 3D objects, it's not any more graphically intense than your average game. But at standard resolution (1024x768) the game struggles to render the entire screen. There are really no resolution options beyond turning down the resolution to 800x600, where the game looks horrible. It's not a computer issue, since my CPU can power through a lot more graphically intense games than this. The camera placement also exhibits problems. This is a first-person perspective game; but instead of placing the camera at eye level, it's a ground level. This leads to the player getting caught up on corners and bridge pieces a lot.

As far as gameplay goes, this title is lacking. With titles like Myst and Syberia, the player could walk around the amazing scenery, exploring many little nooks and crannies that had simple little puzzles or gizmos that didn't necessarily relate back to the main story. Not so with MJII. Beyond the main quest, I didn't encounter anything else to do. Most scenes, while visually pleasing, are not interactive. The only doors that open are the ones that lead to the next puzzle, and that's boring.

Mysterious Journey II falls short of being a great adventure game because of its lack of detail and its extremely difficult puzzles. Casual adventurers beware: this game will frustrate and bore you quickly if you are not prepared with a lot of paper and a good calculator. Mysterious Journey II is in stores now.