Xbox Originals – Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

New character Zoe Castillo a welcomed sight.

by Shadow Wave

© 2008 Ben Cadwallader

“`Following the events of the original game, The Longest Journey on the PC, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey adds a new main character and tries to leave behind the point and click game play and replace it with general 3^rd person controls, combat and simpler puzzles to attract a larger audience. While the new game play doesn’t quite work as well, the game still maintains a superb story.

“`The games new character – Zoe Castillo is first seen in what seems to be her death bed, which then follows the common storyline technique of going back and explaining how she got to that point in time. That really works quite well because as the player, you keep making new theories as you play to the reasoning of how she became ill.

The real beginning of the game starts out on Stark (Our Scientific Earth) in a place called Casablanca, where you basically follow your day to day life, throughout the town, go to the gym, and meet some friends. To the original game, they try to build up the emotional links early in the story.

More review and pics after the jump:-

After a while you meet your ex boyfriend – Reza, who asks you for a favour to deliver something to his house. When you deliver the package, Zoe is attacked by the EYE (secret police) and brought to holding, asking where her boyfriend is, as she doesn’t know and is concerned for his safety. This then becomes Zoe’s motive to travel all over the world and try and find Reza, as well as uncover the nasty truth about the biggest corporation in the world. And of course, will have you visiting Arcadia (Magical Earth) along the way.

Unlike April Ryan, who is a shifter, Zoe travels between sides Stark and Arcadia in a different way, but I won’t reveal that here. Zoe throughout her journey will see visions of a little girl similar to the girl from The Ring, who tells Zoe she needs to save April Ryan, providing Zoe with a reason to be in Arcadia.

April Ryan meanwhile is back and has lost her shifting powers and is living in Arcadia as rebel alongside the invading forces named the Azardi that have taken command over the city. April has quite a different plot line this time round, and even though Zoe and April meet, their end goals are quite different. April is trying to save the city and Zoe is trying to find her boyfriend.

A lot of the locations and characters from the first game are still here such as the Journeyman Inn and Brian Westhouse, these serve as great momentum for the player to keep playing, as you want to learn the history behind their story during the time passed between both games.

The game play of Dreamfall is not as enjoyable this time around. As a player you can still combine items like the original, but you will only have a maximum of around 4 things in your inventory at a time, so combinations are easy to figure out and also are painfully obvious, i.e battery goes in robot. So don’t expect any real puzzles that will stop you playing, they are all easy.

The game tries to introduce a combat mechanic into the game, which was definitely not needed. One, because it’s a game that’s does not need fighting and two, the combat in this game is so pathetically bad and pointless, it’s a chore to do. You have a few moves in combat, but during it, you’ll pick a button and just keep pressing it until the enemy is defeated. Thankfully fighting does not occur very often at all.

The other negative point, besides the 2 main characters Zoe and April, you play as a few others for only a few minutes, it’s really pointless and what you do when playing as them could have been much simpler and entertaining to be told in a cut scene.

Graphically, the game is pretty decent, characters have some good lip synching for its time, and environments are quite believable. As an Xbox Original Title, there was only one graphical issue I noticed; occasionally the top of screen would get graphic distortion that would flicker and conflict with the environment, ie a straight pole at the very top would be diagonal. That being said, it’s very minor and hardly noticeable as its only a very small line at the top of the screen.

Voice work is handled beautifully, all the characters are believable and have the right emotional tone for their script each character is memorable and believable, and truly enhances the fantastic story.

This is a game you play for the story, any RPG lover or someone who fancies a engaging story will be right at home with Dreamfall, With the game lasting between 10 – 15 hours, it is a really great game and a brilliant story, unfortunately the game has a bigger cliff-hanger ending than the likes of Halo 2, which stops right at the climax of the story. So here’s hoping that once Funcom are done with Age of Conan, they move onto finishing this fantastic trilogy.

All in all, the game is great, but tries to dumb down the original game, to make it open to a wider audience of console players. But contains one the best stories in a game I’ve played for years.

For just 1200 MS points, I recommend you purchase this game on the Xbox Live Marketplace if you are into a really fantastic and engaging storyline.

“8.7/10

© 2008 Ben Cadwallader