Amber: Journeys Beyond (Jewel Case)

by Vivendi Universal

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000021XYY
• Product Dimensions: 4.9 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,460 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Amber: Journeys Beyond--a tight and self-contained ghost story--begins when you visit a fellow scientist named Roxy. An avid paranormal researcher, Roxy has chosen her new home because she believes it is haunted. Using a host of unreliable detection devices, she plans to use this house as a laboratory. Her goal: proving the existence of psychic phenomena.

Driving out to the house in a thunderstorm, you are run off the road by a shimmering apparition and are sent crashing into a lake. In short order, you discover other things have gone wrong--Roxy is in the garage, apparently dead. It's up to you to save yourself and the overzealous scientist from the forces lurking in the house.

Patience and close attention to detail are musts for playing Amber: Journeys Beyond. Critical items are sometimes hard to spot, and one or two of the scenes take place in very dark locales. When you can see, the graphics are crisp and drawn with a faint gothic sensibility, surrounding the player in a milieu of creepy sounds and ghost-catching gadgets.

The game is especially suited to beginning or younger gamers, as the problem-solving challenges are on the simple side. Even so, Amber: Journeys Beyond is spooky and engaging, a worthy electronic heir to campfire stories everywhere. Alyx Dellamonica

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good value!, February 10, 2000

By 

Genesis Whitmore (Goldenrod, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amber: Journeys Beyond (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

There's a ton of first-person adventure games out there thanks to Myst, but there's nothing wrong with that! What matters is if the game is enjoyable to play, and in the case of Amber I'd most definately say yes.

Amber: Journeys Beyond is a first person adventure game with somewhat simple graphics and animation... but at the same time the plot and story hold your interest. The premise is that you are 'checking up as a favor to a friend' on a woman who bought a haunted house so she could study the paranormal. She uses a headset called the Amber device so she can observe the ghosts and actually travel in the spirit realm. When you find her she's in a catatonic state, trapped outside of her body with no way of geting back.

Your job is to help your friend by guiding the other spirits in the house to their final rewards by either helping them realize that they're dead, finding an item that they lost, or helping them finish something they never completed in life. There's three people you need to aid before you can help your friend, and no particular order in which to do it.

Although the game is only on one CD, and the graphics are simplistic Amber is still an impressive game for the value. It has enough ambiance to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up more than once (imagine walking into the bathroom and seeing words write themselves on the mirror). Amber can scare you, but it does it in a subtle way instead of shoving a bucketload of gore in your face. The gameplay is a bit short, but still much more than you'd normally expect in a single CD game.

If you want an inexpensive yet interesting adventure this is the game for you.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Adventure Game Ever..., January 24, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Amber: Journeys Beyond (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

This game is the best adventure game ever. Prior to this, Myst was my favorite adventure game. AMBER surpasses Myst in many ways...

Foremost, the puzzles are actually integrated into the storyline. In fact, the stories actually advance the story. In Myst, the puzzles were wonderful, but abstract and unconnected to the story.

Another area where AMBER excelled was the music and sound. The sound effects were wonderful and remarkably restrained. At one point, the subtle sounds of footsteps creaking on floorboards, were amazingly effective at making my hair stand on end. And the music -- particularly the jazzy hip guitar riffs in Brice's world -- were fantastic; likewise, the big band music in Margaret's world was perfect. I only wish I could find the soundtrack to this game.

The graphics in Myst were gorgeous, but in a fantasy sort of way. AMBER's graphics are so realistic and "normal" that I was able to completely forget I was playing a computer gamer.

And finally, the story. This is an area where AMBER *really* excels. If you're at all interested in the supernatural, you owe it to yourself to play this game. The theories presented about ghosts in this game are extremely compelling. This game offers some of the most lucid and believable theories about the paranormal that I've ever seen in a work of fiction.

Kudos to Hue Forest for this modern classic. I can't wait to try out their future efforts.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Can't run on XP, December 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Amber: Journeys Beyond (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)

I have not been able to get this game to run. I've tried contacting someone for technical support - no response. I've searched the internet and finally found today that apparently the game won't run on Windows XP. So if you've got XP, don't buy this game.