The Adventuress

Tuesday Treasure Trove: Numero VIII

by Amber on July 18th, 2006

Yes… I finally did it… I finally finished my longest journey EVER. Actually, I think this was one of the longer adventure games I ever played. Who ever heard of paying full price for an adventure game and be entertained by it for more than 10 hours?! That’s just LUDICROUS, I tell ya… LUDICROUS.

So, yes… My longest journey ever just so happens to be The Longest Journey by FunCom. This game came before another game I previewed called Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and man… was that good. I had some very high expectations for this game and it totally met and rose past them.

Let’s get this party started, homies!

The game starts off with this crazy old lady sitting around in a rocking chair telling stories to these two young whipper snappers. They ask her “Please tell us about the story of how the Balance was saved and how monkeys attacked the space station with the skeleton sword.”

Okay… there were no monkeys or skeleton swords. But there was a space station, oddly enough.

Anywho. The old woman, Lady Alvane, starts to weave her tell and we start our game off. Throughout the game, we learn just exactly what the “Balance” is. Stick with me and you’ll find out, too.

Lady Alvade talking to April.

Xena references. I like Xena.

The main character is April Ryan. You get to play her throughout the game. She’s a smart assed college student who is majoring in art. She left her home on bad terms and she seems to dislike her dad.

Why do I think she doesn’t like her dad? Because she said she’d chainsaw his head in his sleep if she could. She is sadistic, that April Ryan.

Okay, she didn’t actually say ANYTHING about a chainsaw, but wouldn’t that be cool? If I didn’t like my dad, I’d chainsaw his head. Maybe that’s just me, though.

April doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life at the beginning. She’s kind of restless and can’t really focus on her art. She’s suppose to be in an art show in a few days and just can’t find the energy to finish her project. She’s afraid if she does finish it, it’ll be half assed.

Don’t worry, sister… that’s going to be the least of your problems by the end of the game.

FunCom sure does like having girls run around in their undies.

April also has a job as a waitress. Her boss is a real a-hole… he also happens to be Russian. I work with a Russian and she can be a real a-hole, too. I wonder if it runs in the country. Anyways… There’s a job… there’s school, but still, something is missing.

As you progress in the game a little bit, April meets this freaky guy named Cortez. Everyone says he’s crazy and at first you think he’s crazy, too. Cortez tells April that she’s been put on the Earth to save the world. That it is her destiny. April things “Umm, WTF. I’m an art student and I’m 18. I can barely comb my hair in the mornings. I can’t save the world.”

See, the problem with Cortez is that he’s so weird, that April doesn’t really want to listen to him. Cortez basically tells her that there is two parts of the world they are living on. There is a scientific part, which is called Stark and that just so happens to be where April lives. And then there’s the magical part called Arcadia. Now, the Gods long ago seperated the two parts of the world for reasons I can’t remember. Something about balancing out the world, because people were doing bad things with Science AND Magic all being together. Blah blah. So, the Gods appointed 4 guardian dragon things to make sure magic stayed in Arcadia and science stayed in Stark. The guardian dragons were each given a jewel which was a key. Then there’s the Guardian. This poor person is elected to spend 1,000 years in the middle of the two worlds to keep them balanced out. Well, the Guardian has been kidnapped and now stuff is happening that shouldn’t be.

April being a biotch.

One of the things that happens to April that makes her believe in all this crappin’ mumbo jumbo is that this weird little alien looking guy jumps out of the juke box at work to play the flute for everyone. Everyone stops in their tracks as they watch this weird little beasty dance about.

This guy helps April a lot. He makes an Evil Dead reference. I like Evil Dead.

A gay cop. He’s very out.

Yeah, that ain’t suppose to happen in Stark.

Also, April’s landlord tells her something weird happened on her tv that just creeped her out. She said it seemed magical and stuff.

Right.

So, April goes back to Cortez and she believes him finally. He tells April she is what they call a shifter. A shifter happens to be a person who can jump between the two parts of the world at any time. At the beginning, she cannot control her shifting abilities, but as the game progresses, she finally gets to become ULTIMATE SHIFTER. Since her shifting powers suck at first, Cortez helps her go to Arcadia to find out exactly what’s going on, now that’s she’s the savior of the worlds and crap.

While in Arcadia, she meets a whole slew of weird and interesting things. She meets mole people, a woman who likes to cannibalize other people (delicious), people who have blue skin and weird ears, people who have no idea what time frame they’re in, so they use every single word tense that is possible in one sentence (very confusing, I know. I played the game and I’m still confused), a race of people called darkmen who collect every single word ever written and then archive them, stonemen who were made into stone from a crazy wizard named Klack you also have to defeat, stickmen who talk, a giant, people with crabs… erm, I mean crab people… mermaid people and people who fly around like bats who are at war with the mermaid people. Of course, you have to help these two groups to love one another, so that’s always a task… (longest run on sentence I have ever made. SCORE)

Oh and there’s a bird who talks. He becomes your buddy and you name him Crow. He helps you throughout your stay in Arcadia.

Tormenting Crow

While in Arcadia, she has to find all sorts of stones and keys and disks to put the world back together how it should be. These stones and jewels are keys to the puzzle that are the Guardian.

Along the way, she is being stalked by the people who stole the Guardian in the first place. Apparently, this is a group of people who know all about the two worlds. They want to make the two worlds one again, because then this group can have the ultimate power of EVERYTHING, I guess. The leader of this group is a guy by the name of McAllen. McAllen is a bit of an a-hole, you see. He has stolen the Guardian with the intention of putting his own Guardian into place to bring the worlds together. He wants everything you have gathered throughout your adventure to fix the world. He’s planning on using it for his own evil deeds of doom. He’s also captured Cortez, because Cortez has been talking too much. He always was a yapper.

Now, April has a map that tells the location of where the balance between the two worlds is. She, of course, does not want to tell McAllen about this place, so to change her toon, he throws her in a room with an evil mutant monster that looks like he has his intestines on the outside of his body.

Yummy.

Of course, April escapes his clutches, but not without some mystical help. Cortez comes to the rescue, zaps the bad guy. McAllen finds out about this, rushes to where you are and encounters Cortez.

It turns out, Cortez and McAllen are brothers…. and not just the normal kind of brothers, either. They both so happen to be the Dragons who were sent to Stark to protect it. Interesting turn of events. Freaking Cortez is a freaking dragon.

Cortez takes McAllen out and that’s the end of Cortez and McAllen, because of course they both fall to their deaths together. Just like siblings should.

Eventually, April will find the Guardian, Adrian. They go into a space station, and find the rift between the two worlds. Adrian is almost done with his tenure as a Guardian and tells April she is to be the next Guardian. Turns out everyone was wrong.

April gets some lovin’ pills from the men’s bathroom on the space station. Why is she in the men’s bathroom? Because the women’s bathroom was locked! Jerks.

April spikes a guard’s drink on the Space Station with some lovin’ pills.

April leaving the space station. Save April. Save April Ryan.

It isn’t April who will Balance the two worlds. She’s just a stinkin’ pawn. Another guy, one of McAllen’s henchmen, who McAllen stole as a child, is to become the next Guardian. This guy, however, is not balanced. He has a chaotic side that’s roaming around free in the two worlds and then there’s the cruel, calculating side. The henchman attacks Adrian and April must put the two halves of the henchman back together to make him whole.

April’s dad. She has to forgive him to get past a trial.

Of course, she does that. And now a new Guardian is born and the world is whole again.

MAN. That was a long review. But, I sure did have a lot of fun playing this game.

It had a great story, in my opinion. I loved how you had to go back and forth between the two worlds using your scientific brain in one world and your fantasy, magic brain in another.

Now, I’ve heard word that The Longest Journey was a far better game than Dreamfall. I, myself, found them to be equally entertaining. That is why I’m going to give The Longest Journey the same amount of pirate hats that I gave Dreamfall.

It gets a 5 out of 5 hats.

Oh yes. It was awesome.

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POSTED IN: Reviews, Treasure Trove Tuesday