Schizm: Mysterious Journey

by Dreamcatcher

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005A7FK
• Item Weight: 12 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 18, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,297 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Schizm: Mysterious Journey is a thrilling first-person 3-D adventure game that will appeal to everyone from the novice to the experienced adventure gamer. A compelling, nonviolent story line, highly nonlinear gameplay, and incredible graphics combine with a mix of puzzles of varied type, including mechanical, logical, sound, and inventory based.

A fascinating adventure awaits players of Schizm: Mysterious Journey. It is the year 2083. Ten months ago, the first humans landed on Argilus. They found cities, towns, and industrial installations--all deserted. Doors unlocked, meals unfinished, strange machinery still operational... but no people. Scientists were brought in, research bases set up. Four months later, your supply ship has been sent to check on these bases. But when you hail them from orbit, there's no answer. The scientists, too, seem to have vanished. Now your systems are failing and you and your crewmate have no choice but to abandon ship. But where can you go? In Schism: Mysterious Journey, players explore the fascinating landscape in this unfolding story of an alien world filled with mystery and intrigue.

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For Hard-Core Adventure Gamers Only (Get the DVD Version!), January 23, 2002

By 

Michael Paul Sebek (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Schizm: Mysterious Journey (CD-ROM)

Usually I write a review to "gush" all over a product, but for me this game is the exception. In my opinion, some gushing and some caveat emptors are in order for Schizm: Mysterious Journey. First, a review I read before I purchased the game said it best: "Albert Einstein on his best day could not beat this game without a walkthrough!" Plain and simple, some of the the puzzles in Schizm are HARD--VERY, VERY HARD. Second, although other reviews I've read complain about the acting (it's really adequate for a computer game), one main reason I buy an adventure game is for the artwork, graphics, and atmospherics. In Schizm, these elements are "drop-dead gorgeous!" I have never seen an adventure game so beautifully rendered. Also, the music and sounds compliment the game perfectly. Finally, I strongly suggest that anyone purchasing this game buy the DVD version (presuming your computer is so equipped). I'm told that the DVD's graphics are far better than that of the CD-ROM version. So in sum--if it's easy puzzles, a great story line, and "award winning" acting that you want in an adventure game, keep looking. However, if you value REALLY HARD puzzles, a gripping plot, super graphics, marvelous sound and ethereal music, buy the DVD version of Schizm: Mysterious Journey. But beware: it's one for hard-core adventure gamers only.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as I had hoped, November 5, 2001

By 

wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schizm: Mysterious Journey (CD-ROM)

(...)P>I started out liking this game a lot, but as it progressed, I liked it less and less. What I really look for in a game is a first-person perspective, a plot or story that you have to uncover by solving a variety of puzzles, not getting killed, good graphics and decent sound, pretty much in that order. While I found all these things in Schizm and they were enough to keep me interested, the game had problems enough that I became increasingly angry and frustrated with it.

Schizm was designed for DVD and it shows. The CD-Rom version not only has less of a game, but also does not run particularly well. Panning is slow. Sound halts and stutters. Sometimes the game freezes altogether. Allegedly you can correct this by using the full install, but about every time I tried this, the install procedure crashed my computer. The one time I managed to get it fully installed, the game ran in Hungarian or some other Eastern European language, so I had to go back to swapping discs anyway.

This game is complex. Sometimes it seems arbitrarily complex -- that is, the complexity really interfers with enjoyment of the game. The two character perspective starts out as intriguing but just becomes a pain as you can't ever move them at the same time, but have to keep going back and forth between them even when they're supposed to be together. Several times this involved swapping discs half a dozen times in the space of thirty seconds of gameplay. They come up with a lame plot element to explain this, but it's still a drag, especially since there is no zip feature to speed you past places you've already been. A zip feature would have been very helpful.

The puzzles range from somewhat hard to extremely difficult. Often the difficulty stems less from mental capacity needed to solve them than from some arbitrary complexity that just seems put there to make the puzzle hard. For example, several puzzles contained so many variables that even when you knew the logic involved you still had to spend an inordinate amount of time going through the variables to find the one that worked. Some indication of the correct path would have been helpful. (Spoiler)

The sound puzzles in general were ill-conceived. I really think if you're going to have sound based puzzles in a game you should make the sounds thins like tones or bells or rhythms, or even snatches of music -- things that are easily recognizable. Trying to understand an alien language that sounded like badly recorded backwards masking was just too much.

There were a lot of inconsistencies in the alien culture, as well. Why should you use one set of number symbols in one place and a completely different set in another? Because things were often so different from place to place, I, at least, had the feeling that I never really learned anything and was making no progress.

There were a lot of things in the game I got that just didn't function. Mission logs that were supposed to be accessible were not accessible, characters who were supposed to appear did not appear. Fortunately everything that was absolutely necessary to the progression of the game happened, but I was in a constant state of anxiety that I would miss something vital.

I was interested enough in Schizm not to quit, but I spent a lot of time in what seemed to be pointless busy-work and I never really felt like I knew quite what was going on or how to proceed. I like non-linear games, but at times Schizm seemed so non-linear as to be incoherent.

Probably this is not a game that is going to keep you completely absorbed far past your bedtime, but it is a good game to play for a couple hours, then put away and come back to later.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great game yet difficult..., February 11, 2002

By 

An old time adventurer (International) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schizm: Mysterious Journey (CD-ROM)

I must say that when I first bought this game I wasn't sure if it was worth it since the game was released by Dreamcatcher Interactive which I had bad experiences with their games, the only game from them worth mentioning was "In Cold Blood", but after I played Schizm - Mysterious Journey my eyes shined and I decided maybe I should give this company another chance.

Let me first state that I bought the CD-ROM version since I don't have a DVD-ROM.

The graphics in Schizm are absolutely stunning, although they graphics appeared a little blurry at times and the colors were a bit distorted, the overall of the graphics is very good. When you look and explore the beautiful gigantic world, all the Air Balloons, the flying ships, they were spectecular. I'd give the graphics a solid 4 stars.

The puzzles in this game were VERY hard, take it from someone who beated adventure games like Discworld 1, Riven, Ripper and some other hard adventures, this puzzles in this game are probably the hardest you'll ever encounter in an adventure game, you have to be some sort of a mathematics professor to beat some of them. I've been playing for a couple of weeks and I'm only half way. If you're the type who likes brain-busting puzzles (like me) you should definitely try this game out.

The plot of this game is very unusual, at times intriguing, at other times less intriguing.

Overall, this is a great Myst-clone adventure that if anyone who wants to experience something a little different and is willing to work his mind overtime, he should definitely give this one a look...