Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2128 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Piranha Interactive Publishing
• Model: MORIOCBFLX
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Macintosh, Windows

Amazon.com Review
Morpheus is a lushly rendered puzzle game in the same genre as Myst and Riven. You begin the game lost in an arctic blizzard, trying to find clues to the disappearance of your explorer father, who vanished three decades ago in the same frozen wasteland.

The hokey 1950s video of your frostbitten character is thankfully left behind for the haunting visuals of an icebound ship, the Herculania. As you wander through the ship's fabulous art deco ballroom, movie theater, and other rooms you'll manipulate objects and find clues to how the six passengers diverted themselves with evil intentions and forbidden love. Con artists and hypocrites (with one exception), they came aboard the Herculania seeking pleasure--only to become ensnared in their hosts' scientific experiments. You'll also confront the Neurographicon, a futuristic dreams-to-reality device that you suspect trapped your father before you.

Integrated QuickTime sequences, ambient sounds, and the ability to pan 360 degrees enhance the gothic creepiness of this game. The game begins slowly, but the puzzles soon pick up the intellectual pace. Environment is important, and clues can be devastatingly subtle, though not as biographical as one might expect.

Morpheus is a rich, many-layered experience, with puzzles inside of puzzles, and you'll get a lot of play for your money. To finish you'll need a large notepad and pencil, some math, and careful powers of observation--or a lot of time. --Betsy Aoki

Pros:

• Lavish, colorful graphics and ambient sound
• Story rich enough to intrigue without excessive gore
• Engaging--the puzzles require thought and observation

Cons:

• Use of 3 CD-ROMs means you have to switch discs throughout the game
• Occasional crash for Mac users; PC users, note the patch

Amazon.com Product Description
This beautifully rendered, three-CD epic for Windows and Mac takes you on an enthralling adventure into the eerie and sometimes troubling lives and dreams of the passengers on a mysterious ship called Herculania. The Herculania's maiden voyage went very awry, and six passengers remain trapped aboard. Their bodies have been stored in the Neurographicon, a podlike machine that preserves their dreams and nightmares forever. Upon exploring each pod, a gripping tale of greed, passion, and revenge unfolds. Experience the passengers' tragic lives through their dreams, ghosts, and visions. Explore the six graphically exquisite dream worlds of these ill-fated passengers. The clues gained from exploring each of these worlds bring you one step closer to solving the mystery, aiding someone urgently in need and resolving the fate of your beloved father's disappearance.

Customer Reviews

That's What I Like!
The year is 1957. You are an Arctic explorer, intent on solving the mystery of his father's disappearance some thirty years before. Unfortunately, you've become lost and it looks as though you're going to go the same way as dear old dad. You keep having these strange dreams. Coming out of one (or have you?), you suddenly find the icebound hulk of a cruise ship. When you climb on board to find shelter, you discover that the ship is the Herculania, the very vessel that your father was investigating when he was lost.

_Morpheus_ is a great example of a breed of adventure that pretty much started with MYST and is now, unfortunately for people like me, beginning to wane a bit in prominence: first person, point and click, atmospheric. You might call it "Amber on Ice;" like _Amber_ it involves somewhat supernatural phenomena and getting into the minds and dreams of others. The story that is revealed as you wander about the ship--presented in QT movies--is a kind of Phantom of the Opera with a gruesome twist. Unlike the stories in some other games, it is quite well-developed and realised, making for intriguing clues and puzzles integral to the story. The characters are, well, mental cases, but they are believable people and (with one exception) you end up feeling sympathy for them.

The graphics are really quite nice, with a 360-degree view. (My one complaint here was that though you could look around you to all sides, you could not look either up or down). The paths that you could travel were somewhat limited, however. In some rooms, you could, for example, only go into the corner by the desk. There were also a lot of things I would have liked to have been able to examine more closely. On the other hand, there were a few things that didn't seem to have any purpose. On the whole, the look trod the edge between sparse and lush, with backgrounds beautifully rendered but not too many objects.

As in MYST, the puzzles are largely mechanical. You need to make the ship work so you can figure out what's going on; you need to gain access to locked staterooms and so on. Later on there are some puzzles that involve acquiring inventory, but there is essentially no inventory you carry around; you use each item pretty much where you find it. There are no conversations and no interactions. For me, this was great; I prefer "true" puzzles to task accomplishment and mechanics to inventory. Others might find it tedious or difficult.

I ran this game on a brand new AMD 2800 with XP and the only real problem I had was that the mouse cursor was so extraordinarily sensitive that until I learned fine motor control I was all over the place. Fortunately, this didn't take long. I also had some problems with the movies: green screens and the like. I have heard there is a patch for this, but I couldn't find it.

_Morpheus_ took me about 25 hours to play. The start was slow and I wasn't sure I liked it at first. When things started to go together, I liked it a great deal. I was sorry to see it end, and the ending was quite abrupt!

Overall, this is the kind of adventure game that I like. If you're a fan of MYST an MYST-like games, you'll like this, too.

The Strangest Journey
Wow, I really don't know what to say about Morpheus (Does anyone even know why it was called that? The ship was the Herculania?!)It was a little too sci-fi for me. Some of the puzzles were too contrived and at times it was extremely frusterating because I had no clue what was going on. I just didn't know what to do! Belle, Billy and Grace's worlds were great, but Leo's was too strange, and poor Muffy! (Muffy's tag was found at the butchers. Guess why it was found and Muffy was not.) The graphics were luscious, but all togher, I'm not sure if it was worth my money. Would I recommend this game? Well, not to anyone with XP, for me, it didn't work too well. After reading the raving review from JustAdventure, I was positive that I would enjoy it, but after playing it, I'm positive that I would have rather wasted my time on something else. I wanted a game with a ship, not sure why, but I did. Titanic Adventure Out Of Time was more my price range, but I now see the error of my ways. If you like Adventures, try some worth-while ones like Syberia, Beyond Atlantis 2 or The Longest Journey! Spare yourself!

Excellent Escapism
I loved this game. Initially I bought it because of the price...and because I thought it might be interesting. I was hooked right from the jump. The graphics were incredible and the little movie scenes took me by surprise and left me with goosebumps. I'm not a bigtime gamer but I love this type of game where you can just get lost in the world you're playing in. I especially enjoyed the dream worlds...I wish they were more in-depth so I could have explored even more and spent more time there. I recommend this game to everyone who likes the escape of this type of game. Some of the other reviews on here talk about flatness of acting and all kinds of technical flaws, etc...just play the game and immerse yourself. You'll love it... I want to make a return trip to the Herculania and all it's bizarre, magnificent worlds!