Customer Reviews

Volume 1 Adventure Collection

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

These are 5 decent adventure games at a good price. I would suggest the potential purchaser read the reviews of the individual games to get reviews for each since they have all been sold individually. All are third person adventure or fantasy games except for Return To Mysterious Island which is first person.
Of the 5, Dead Reefs was the most troublesome to install and operate. The keyboard operability was clumsy and took getting use to. More significantly the game mysteriously locks up my computer and turns my screen a greyish white at signicant points along the game play including the initial startup. Thanks to some game bloggers, I discovered that pressing the spacebar 1 to 3 times unlocked the freeze and continued the game. Do this slowly until the game frees up. You might lose an animation or two, but they are usually not that important anyway.
Like some adventure game players, I had already purchased and played 2 of the games individually, but even so, the unused price made it worthwhile to buy this collection for the remaining 3 games. Good deal with a few minor problems.

It's easier to review the games one by one. I have not played Dead Reefs because the reviews say it's buggier than an entymologist's den. Disregard the ratings above because I would rate each game so differently. Also, I would buy it again, if only for two of the games.

1. Keepsake: The visuals were gorgeous; the puzzles were interesting, with a few of the usual puzzles thrown in. The storyline was stupid. We're in a school of magic! Wizards, dragons, you know! Could we have a little action, please? How about a real bad guys? And frankly, Celeste got on my nerves.

2. Return to Mysterious Island: Visually okay, but I really, really loved loved loved the fact that puzzles had more than one solution. I played it twice just to try things differently. I've always hated the fact that you can be standing over a bomb, needing the wire cutters, and going to die because you only have a pair of scissors. In real life, you wreck the scissors, get a little shock, and live. Story line was a little thinner than usual, but the flexibility of the game made it one of my favorites in this pack. Only one pixel hunt I can think of.

3. Nibiru: This game reminds me of Eastern European films: Grim, humorless, inflexible, and giving me a lot less agency than I am used to. Not a coincidence--it's based on an Eastern European game. Too much walk and talk. Storyline could have been interesting, if it didn't insist on being so noir. At least it wasn't buggy. It was beautiful, though. Points for using Nazis without falling into sterotypes.

4. Tunguska--we enjoyed this one. Humor, action, and a great button. You push on it and you can see all the "hot spots" on the screen. No more pixel hunting. Good storyline. We await the sequel. I think if you like Broken Sword, you'll like Tunguska.

This is a collection of some of the most worthy adventure games in recent time... not the best collection, but hey, it's under $20, and for 5 games, can't complain about that. The games are as follow:

1) Tunguska - Probably the best of the bunch. Conspiracies and Russians and mysteries - oh my!

2) Deadreefs - You like pirates? ARRR, maties!

3) Return to Mysterious Island - Stranded on an Island. Now must explore and uncover its hidden secrets. In another word, your standard aventure game, but a good one.

4) NibiRu - You are Indiana Jones... Er, I meant, you are Martin Holan, sent on an adventure to uncover secrets of the Nazis and Mayans!

5) Keepsake - You are Harry Potter, but had a sex change. Now, you must solve the mysteries behind the disappreance of everyone inside the magic institution you are attending.

Really, you should give these a try. One thing though; these games are not patched! So, get your patches... 2 of the 5 anyways.

Enjoy gaming!

I agree with several reviewers that mention how much adventuring you get for so little money in this collection. I found all of the games to be enjoyable to play although enjoyable in different ways.
Keepsake - visually awe inspiring; now that's what I expect a School of Magic to look like
Nibiru - like watching a movie with puzzles for commercials
Secret Files: Tunguska - this was a surprisingly good straight forward adventure game. I could associate more with the characters because of a lighthearted, almost comedic atmosphere.
Return to Mysterious Island - this is a first person adventure style that I particularly like with lots of inventory and building your own combinations of items.
Dead Reefs - a ghostly adventure that for a few minutes gave me that Afraid of the Dark creepiness. I had to install the Xvid driver to get this game to run on any of my systems.
The bottom line is that no matter which type of adventure game style you prefer, you will find it here along with some quality efforts from other styles.
And all of these for less than the price of one regular game. I recommend it as a nice collection for seasoned adventure gamers.

This was a great way to play five games at a great price. Unfortunately "Dead Reefs" never played on my computer, on either the administrator setting of my own setting. I was able to play "Keepsake" and "Mysterious Island" on my own sign-in without any problems. I did have top run "Tunguska" on the administrator-id in order to play it. I had already played "Nibiru" on its own, so I have no real feedback on how it played with the anniversary set. However, all the games, with exception to "Dead Reefs" were great because they were challenging enough, unlike "Mist" or "Rhem," which can be overly challenging for just a fun game.
If it's something fun to do in your spare time, this is a great price for quality games.

I think this is the best twenty dollars I have ever spent. The only game I had trouble with is the "Dead Reefs". It was a bit too complicated. The other four games were wonderful with fantastic graphics and an interesting story line. To have four wonderful games out of five for the price, is a miracle of our times.

This is actually a pretty decent collection of adventure games and will be great for anyone wanting to pick up some enjoyable games they can play on their own or with family, etc.

First up, the games all worked fine on my laptop with a Core duo and nvidia 7400 go graphics (dead reefs included). No patches were required for any of the games.

In my opinion, the best game here is Return to the Mysterious Island (which is great for playing with 9-12yr old family members!); it's a beautiful game, with interesting puzzles. One thing though is it's an inventory based game (meaning you end up with a billion items in your inventory that you have to piece together). Some of the items that you merge are pretty bizarre and I had to get a couple of hints. Very enjoyable though.

Of the other games, the next best is probably Tunguska, which is easy to play and engaging -- the only downer being the voiceovers which are pretty low-grade. Keepsake is fun but the puzzles are tough and it has a downbeat ending, Nibiru is okay but has aged more than the others. It's also based on the talk to person A five times before going to place B, then take item C and now D works type of adventure, which was not to my taste. Dead Reefs is the stinker with a horrible keyboard based movement and a terrible 3rd person camera that made me feel motion sick (the only game that ever has). Still, there has to be one letdown, right?

One point to note is the game comes on a single DVD with no printed instructions at all -- they are all on the DVD as PDF files which you must print yourself.

Overall, a good collection -- I paid $15 for mine, which I think is a steal.

Only three of the four games would run without extensive screwing around with patches and the like. One would think all the updates would be included in this release, but noooooo. One of the games would never run (Dead Reefs) on two of my machines even though they both met the stated requirements. The installer/deinstaller was a joke since you could not intstall or deinstall a single game. My emails to the manufacturer went unanswered and the web site suggestions did not work. A very poor result in my opinion....just a way to wring a few more bucks out of the public

When I have the extra time and need to relax but am not in the mood for a book, this is what I do. Adventure Company put some great games on this collection. I really hope they come out with a Volume 2 soon. The music is beautiful, the games are entertaining, It's a great way to take a break from work and everything else. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for fun mystery/puzzle-type computer games.

I am so disappointed, because the games that I have been able to play without much difficulty were great. Mysterious Island seems to be the only one I could play without trouble. I got through Tunguska, but the video segments cut out. I can't even launch Dead Reefs without the computer freezing. With Niburu, the dialogue cuts out after the first word any character says. I had some trouble launching Keepsake, but it seems to be working OK now. But I'm not as crazy about this game as I was about Tunguska and Mysterious Island. I guess I could say I have already gotten my $20 worth with what I have played, but I really wish I could play the other games too.