Customer Reviews

Atlantis Evolution

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is not your typical puzzle-based adventure game. Most of the puzzles were classic arcade-style or brain teaser games that had little to do with the story. (Pong?)

What I liked about the game is that it truly was an interactive story, and one that held my interest. I also liked that the viewing control inside the world was 360/3D. You still moved from point to point, though. I found it similar to Myst III in that respect. I also thought the plot line, cut scenes, and characters had merit.

The main issue I had with this game was the situations where you could "die" if you didn't move quickly enough and know exactly what to do. It's a bit stressful for someone who doesn't like shoot-em-up action games. However, the game is also forgiving in that it restarts you fairly close to where you died, so not much time is wasted repeating things as in some other games like this.

I played this entire game in about 6-7 hours one Sunday afternoon.

Bought this game on strength of belief that it just might be an interesting continuation of the Atlantis series of games. Well, it definitely had an interesting premise, but as for "enjoyment", NOT. I am NOT a fan of action, shoot-em up or get killed type of game. I play games for relaxation and fun. In these categories, this did not do it. For me, whole game was periods which I would FINALLY get through, alternated with sequences of pure tedium. In the former, I would almost find myself shaking with tension; in the latter, only shear determination would do it.

Did find the arcade sections more annoying than engaging, and I'm a veteran of "Schizm's" computer games from hell. At least the games in "Schizm" had SOME relation to the overall plot. These didn't really.

"Beyond Atlantis" (a/k/a Atlantis 2) is STILL the best of the lot. Having spent as much money on this game, I WAS determined to get through it, otherwise, there are much better games out there.

Either buy it used, or just save your money.

I bought this game thinking it would be a lot like Myst, and it is. It's got amazing graphics (though not above and beyond everything else out there) and some good puzzle solving, but the game was really short and lots of it was pretty annoying.

So much of it was just wandering around through mazes trying to figure out what the heck still needing doing (invariably it was picking up some stick that looked like part of the landscape). And it only took me a few days to beat it and I wasn't really playing for more than a few hours a day.

There are better strategy games out there for the price I think. I was pretty disappointed with this game.

A long-time adventure gamer, I have been following this series since its beginning. I have enjoyed the other Atlantis games for the most part.

To make a long story short...this was horrible. I am utterly speechless as to how bad it is.

Main complaints:
(1) Dialog: wooden and embarassing. I tend to look forward to a little campy dialog, but this was just bad. I can overlook the grotesquely exaggerated physical features on every character, but if I hear one more "goddess" whine about "daddy" I think I will vomit.
(2) Excessive hunting. In various phases of the game, you will be wandering and wandering and trying to solve puzzles with items in inventory. This is normal. What is not normal: in a forest, you will have to find the SPECIAL STICK leaning against a rock in a special section of trail. (A freakin' forest where one could cut one at will, and we have to find the SPECIAL one. The same is true for things like a handful of pebbles (dang ground is full of pebbles--we need to find the SPECIAL pebbles that the game says we can pick up and they are located in a weird tucked away spot). There is a LOT of this sort of thing. This does not make the game more difficult, so much as tedious and annoying.
(3) The designers of this game seem overly fascinated with 70s and 80s arcade games. So...we walk up to a door, click on the device and we are treated to a very low-res version of (I kid you not) Frogger or Pong that looks like it was done by my kid on an old TRS-80. These games must be "won" in order to proceed. It is ridiculous and interrupts the flow of the game, such as it is.
(4) Gameups interruptus. Absurdly rushed ending. The character completes his task (ending the reign of the "gods") and when he turns around, all of the various people he helped previously on the game...those who were supposed to be on the planet surface, rather than in this strange floating space palace, are standing right freakin' there! (Hooray! You did it! Goodbye. Go home. No prize for you.)

I am used to Adventure Company (aka "Dreamcatcher") games being very hit or miss, but this miss is so wide of the mark that the perpetrators ought to have been to embarassed to put it on the market. I feel sorry for anyone who paid the original price for this mess.

The game seems to have beautiful graphics; but unless you have the simple faith of an overgrown child, and believe that having a lot of time just ripped out of your life for no reason whatsoever is a good thing, you will NEVER get to see the graphics, because your first task is to find some way out of the belly of some sort of ship, but there is not the slightest clue as to how you're supposed to do this.

Theoretically, that means that you have to scan literally every pixel of the ship's interior (using a rather inefficient lamp) and hope to god you have the dumb luck to bump into the right trigger that opens the door to the next level. That is not in any definition of "puzzle" or "mystery" with which I'm familiar.

Well, I don't like wasting my time; and I don't like game designers who think I should.

*Review based on Demo*

Poor voice acting, bad script, falls short in so many ways.

I wanted to like this game, but it was dull and uncreative. Just a bad production altogether. I wouldn't pay more than $5 for this game. At that price I might be able to stomach it's inadequacies.

Beyond Atlantis is one of my favorite pc games ever so I was really excited to play this game. However it was highly disappointing. This game was way too short and the storyline was nowhere near as interesting as Beyond Atlantis.

I can not get this game to load - I tried contacting The Adventure Company for tech support so I could find out if it was because I have Vista or if it was another issue, but got no response from them. These type of computer games are a dying breed and in my opinion the best to play so I'm really bummed that you sent me a bad product. Tracy Klaus

I needed a walkthrough to get through a lot of it. I got stuck on a shoot-em-up game and I tried for 3 hours to kill off the "gods." They need a "skip" button for these types of things. I play games to relax; not to get stressed out and carpal tunnel syndrome playing the same stupid thing over and over and over until I couldn't stand it anymore. I could not move forward because this particular part of the game was so annoying. It irritated me so much I said, forget it, and I uninstalled it. It wasn't worth trying to move on after 50 tries.

I am a fan of adventure games that are truly adventures where you explore, make use of what you find, and engage in conversations with interesting characters to obtain clues. Many games fit this bill and I enjoyed all of them. Some of them even instill emotion and involvement with the story like a good novel. I've never read a novel where I had to play an arcade game or solve a meaningless puzzle to get to the next chapter.

For those developers and publishers (the same names keep appearing) who just do not have the creativity or expertise to create these good adventure games, "puzzles", "mazes", idiotic "side games" , etc. are believed to make their game "good". I feel more a sense of accomplishment by studying clues and using tools ('ya know...duh sorta like in real life??) than shooting some programmer's vision of a "monster" and jumping over mountains or trying to figure out how different colored shapes fit together to open a freaking door. How lame is that crap?

I am sure there are a lot of gamers who like that sort of mindless, reactionary, tedium perhaps because that is all they know how to do.