Adventure Gamers - Forums

One of Omar Sharif’s role was that of Captain Nemo in Mysterious Island, so here’s Return to Mysterious Island today.

This is a “new wave” of adventure games. Seriously, the dark age 2000-2003 was over, and European companies emerged. As one of the first Kheops’ adventures (Crystal Key II and The Egyptian Prophecy were released some months earlier in 2004), it was a cocktail of fresh ideas and new concept. It was “Myst” but it also had an inventory you can get lost in; it was photo-realistic almost as FMV, and it head comic-book cutscenes; It was non-linear, and it had points.

Some of the execution felt just shy of great to me. I don’t know what, really. There’s nothing epic about it, as you might expect from such a theme. It’s slow, and character’s development and story additions are nothing to write home about. Inventory is full of stuff, non-linear in item combinations, but not with a too much “variety” to it. But arm yourself with patience and you’ll be rewarded. This is one of those games where you need to know how to enjoy just by standing at the beach sand, looking at the water and doing nothing. Hearing the sounds in the cave, just as though you were in the shellfish. Smelling the island’s vegetation (OK, perhaps not that one). There never was an adventure that came closer to being Robinson Crusoe (apart from some obscure adventure game “Robinson Crusoe”). Go play it now!

RtMI is one of those games that I started but then quickly lost all interest in.

I guess the combination of an inventory the size of Ismelda Marcos shoe-closet, tedious tasks like finding food and water, and no real story beyond “You are stranded on a deserted Island” (at least at the point where I quit), simply aren’t to my taste.