Product Description

Unique World Interaction-Dreamfall introduces the brand new focus field feature which bridges the gap between the classic point and click adventure game, where you could click on any given point at the screen, and the action adventure, where you need to move up to an object to interact with it. In this easy-to-use context-sensitive interface you can scan your entire visible environment as seen by the characters, and use it to get information on far away objects as well as triggering remote gameplay opportunities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9970 in Video Games
• Brand: Aspyr
• Released on: 2006-04-17
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Windows XP

Features

• Continue the saga in this epic journey of exploration and adventure
• Mature "thriller"-type storyline includes murder, deceit, and conspiracy
• 3 playable characters each with unique abilities and world views
• Spans 3 beautifully realized, fully interactive worlds
• Stunning graphics; easy-to-use context-sensitive interface

From the Manufacturer
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, winner of multiple E3 awards as the best game in its genre, is the continuation of a saga that began with the award-winning The Longest Journey. In Dreamfall, players are taken on an epic journey of exploration and adventure as they venture through a thrilling and emotional storyline. Dreamfall features a fully interactive world where beautiful music, stunning graphics, fascinating characters, and unparalleled gameplay variety promises to bring the adventure genre into a new era. Prepare for a spiritual, fantastic, and powerful gaming experience.

Features:

• Unparalleled gameplay variety: Use your brains or your brawn; sneak, fight, or talk your way through the many challenges the game offers. Be polite or rude, threaten or sweet talk; in Dreamfall you make the choice, resulting in a game where you never quite know what to expect next.
• Three playable characters: Experience the story from three separate perspectives, and learn how their destinies blend together in an epic finale. Each character has unique abilities and world views, giving you constant gameplay variations.
• Three worlds: Dreamfall spans three beautifully realized worlds, multiple chapters, and a stunning amount of detailed locations. Travel across a futuristic version of our earth, journey into a magical fantasy realm, and unravel the mysteries of the Winter.
• Unique world interaction: Bridging the gap between the classic point-and-click adventure game, where you could click on any given point at the screen, and the action adventure, where you need to move up to an object to interact with it, Dreamfall introduces the brand-new focus field feature. In this easy-to-use context-sensitive interface you can scan your entire visible environment as seen by the characters, and use it to get information on far away objects, as well as triggering remote gameplay opportunities.
• Mature "thriller"-type storyline: Dreamfall delivers a mature and compelling storyline that mixes the futuristic, fantastic, and spiritual with a tale of murder, deceit, and a conspiracy threatening our very existence. Bringing the classic adventure game into the world of the modern action game, Dreamfall delivers a rare and special story experience.
• Stunning sounds and soundtrack: Listen to an emotional and epic soundtrack in 7.1 surround. Hear gripping voices as recorded by more than 50 professional actors, and enjoy soundscapes bringing players to the edge of their seats.
• A game for everyone: 50-percent of the players of the original The Longest Journey were women. With its cinematic approach, believable characters, mature storyline, and easy-to-grasp interface, Dreamfall is a game that any teenager or adult can pick up and enjoy, regardless of their gaming background.

Customer Reviews

Terrific
Six years. Quite a long time to be waiting for a sequel to an adventure game. It is also quite a long time for graphics, hardware and gameplay to change. When the Longest Journey came out, it was heralded by critics as being one of the best adventure games a person could buy. It incorporated a terrific story, wonderful voice work and, at the time, good graphics that helped bring depth to the genre. Now, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is out, a direct sequel to the events of the first game. Is it everything we could hope for? Well, that depends on what you're looking for.

A lot of reviews out there, including here on amazon.com, have talked about various aspects of the game. The negative points discussed were the easiness of the gameplay, the bulkiness of the controls and the horrible combat. The positives have been over-whelming the terrific, complex and utterly addictive story and plot. So, depending on what you are looking for, you will either really love this game or really dislike it.

AS far as the gameplay is concerned, I tried playing it with a mouse and keyboard but the controls felt wonky to me. I am a console player mostly and because of my lack of affinity with the mouse and keyboard for third person controlled games I spend a good deal of time walking into things and the walls. However, plugging in a controller, all of my complaints went away. I'd recommend trying a controller if you have any problems, as the game seems better suited to it (probably due to the fact it is also an Xbox game).

The difficulty has been lessened from The Longest Journey. One one hand, this is definitely a valid complaint. However, my complaint with the first game was that there were times where the puzzles seemed utterly illogical and were very order-specific. I would spend a long time trying to get something accomplished simply because I didn't do it exactly how the game wanted me to. In that aspect, Dreamfall lessens any frustrations to allow you to enjoy the story more fully. That said, the puzzles do lack the depth of The Longest Journey and adventure games in general. I wish they were a bit more difficult or took a little more brain power to figure out what to do.

The combat is a bit clunky. It is comprised of block, light hit and strong hit. A rock, paper, scissors type gameplay ensues where a strong hit will break through a block, a block defends against a light punch and a light punch can break someone from doing a strong attack. However, the controls are a bit wonky as well, making battles easy but unintuitive. You can also slide to the side, forward and back while blocking. While it's not up to par with fighting games like Dead or Alive, what do you want from an adventure game?

Actually, calling it a game might be stretching it a little. And I don't mean this in a bad way. Playing this game reminds me of another fantastic adventure game called Indigo Prophecy, but without the simon says style gameplay. Here, you will move from place to place, work on puzzles, do some stealth and some clunky fighting. But the gameplay is there to pull you in and create an interactive story. A cinematic story that has you at the center. I like this approach.

Graphically, I think the game is stellar. There've been complaints in this department as well, but I think the game is pretty stunning. While there's no way it could live up to the powerhouse of, say, Oblivion, what is here is terrific. The colors are vibrant and lush, the settings are absolutely beautiful. Casablanca, the starting city, feels like a mix of futuristic landscapes with a traditional Spanish-style living. Add to this the vibrant color scheme and terrific art direction, and I think the game is stunning.

One department no one seems to be complaining about is the sound. From the beautiful music to the very competent voice staff, everything runs well. Some characters are a little lacking, not necessarily in their voices but in the direction. Sometimes it seems as if the voice actors don't know the context of what they are saying and stress words wrongly or don't have the excitement or fear that one would have in their situations. As an example, in the beginning someone is afraid of something (I'm being purposefully vague) and cries "No! No!" but it's almost as if the threat is a mere bother as opposed to a possibly life-altering event. Other times, though, the voice actors are terrific in conveying the emotion.

The game scales really well. While I'm playing it above the recommended specs, there's nary a fault or bug that I've come across. There's no slowdown from what I've seen. It also scales terrifically well to fit your monitor. I've played it on a regular 19" all the way up to a widescreen monitor and it is terrific. The game was made to be played in 16:9 widescreen. Like I said earlier the controllers work terrifically with the game. I am using an Xbox 360 controller and I haven't had a single problem, save that the trigger buttons don't register.

One confusing problem is the constant presence of loading screens. There are a ton of them breaking up cutscenes as well as action. It's a little disappointing. I'm sure part of the problem was to help make it playable on both the Xbox and the PC. But load screens are a normal part of our life now and even the "triple A games" like Half Life 2 utilize them. And the loading screens in Dreamfall, while frequent, aren't long by any means. So, to me, it is a minor nuisance that I completely ignored and only bring it up because of other reviews out there commenting that reviewers aren't bringing it up ;)

All of this is simply the mechanics, though. What lies at the heart of this game, much like The Longest Journey, is a story. A story that is exciting, mysterious and emotional all at the same time. The Longest Journey was, at the time, probably one of the best stories I had seen in a video game. Dreamfall has, in my opinion, blown that story out of the water. People will probably argue this with me, but I think Dreamfall's story is definitely a bit better. It seems more urgent this time around. Partly, this is because of the fact its more of an "action adventure" game as opposed to a point and click game. Whereas in The Longest Journey there were instances where you were chased, you couldn't die. Here, things seem a bit more dire and urgent. The pacing of Dreamfall is also excellent and helps keep you moving from point to point. Ragnar Tornquist has a much better control of the story and spins a yarn fitting of a novel. I don't want to talk about the story at all in order to allow everyone a chance to view it with virgin eyes. To get the story across, there is a ton of dialogue. Much like the first game, Dreamfall allows its characters to talk and talk about their lives, what's going on in the world and the plot. While playing The Longest Journey isn't necessary per se, characters from it will show up in surprising ways, starting off from the very beginning. A small caveat about the story. Yes, the story doesn't end so much as set up events for a third game. However, if you look back at The Longest Journey, you would also find a game that doesn't end. It, too, basically explains what would happen in the second game and leaves so many threads open. Here's hoping the game sells well enough to merit a third game.

So here lies the crux. The reviews here and your enjoyment of the game will come to this: do you want a game that puts gameplay above story or a game that places story above gameplay. If you choose the former, you probably won't like this game as much. However, if you are like me and enjoy the latter, I can't recommend any other game higher than this one right now. I can normally overlook most flaws or gameplay issues in a game, if it keeps me enthralled with a terrific story. I enjoy story-centered games a ton. So I feel confident rating this game as a five star simply because I never had a dull moment. I compare both The Longest Journey and Dreamfall to novels. Very dense and filled with backstory, characters and plot, Dreamfall isn't a typical video game. You have to really want to get to know everything and everyone in it to get the most out of the game. If you want to really sink your teeth into a story and know everything there is to know about a fantastical world, there's no better place than Dreamfall.

Major disappointment to a huge TLJ fan

The original TLJ is one of my favorite games of all times, so getting the sequel was a no brainer. But while Dreamfall has some good things about it, overall it's a major disappointment even without the unavoidable comparison to the great original.
Basically, it seems like everybody involved with the game ran out of ideas. There are very few puzzles, most of them are very easy, and fairly dull. The game advances more like a movie. While the environments are pretty and fun to explore you feel that you're really not controlling anything, but rather are being controlled by the game writers.
The dialogue is great, and so it seems at times that the story is good, but it really isn't. The plot really seems like a poor rip off of Akira and F.E.A.R. and has a lot of generic science fiction cliches. A lot of the characters and plot lines seem to be completely irrelevant to the main plot, and while they're fun while you're doing them, at the end it all feels pointless. You get to switch between three characters, two of which are fairly annoying and add nothing to the experience, serving more as a gimmick.
The ending has been much discussed, which is ironic because there is no ending. Without revealing too much, after finishing the game I felt cheated, because despite all my efforts, my impact on the events of the story remains minimal. This is very artsy and post modern, but people want adventures and at least some kind of a resolution that makes sense, rather than cliches and post modernist smugness. The action and stealth elements are just annoying and seem to be intended simply to stretch the game which takes about 10 hours to finish, very different from the truly long and engaging TLJ.
Overall I enjoyed the first 2/3rd of the game just because of the characters and the dialogue, even though it didn't come close to comparing to the longest journey. But the ending is so contrived, cliche and unrewarding, it brings my tilt for the game way down.

A simple free solution to the "control" problem
I've read a number of reviews which complain about how hard it is to control the characters in this game in the pc version. The solution to this problem is to go into your computer's keyboard settings and set the key repeat delay to long (the lowest setting), and the repeat rate to slow (again, the lowest setting). This will solve the problem (also solves this problem in the new Tomb Raider: Legends game). The keyboard settings can be found in the control panel (go to Start, Control Panel, Keyboard), and click okay after making the changes.

Ordinarily, you wouldn't want your keyboard to work this way. When you press the curser key, you want it to move repeatedly and quickly across the computer screen. Or when you want delete a sentence, you want the backspace key to repeatedly go back quickly, without having to keep pressing the backspace key. But for some games that use the keyboard to control a character, you need to keep the keyboard from rapidly repeating the key you are pressing, else holding down a key even for a short period will cause the character to keep moving, even after you've taken your finger off the movement key.

I've just begun the game, and the graphics are very nice, and the controls are very intuitive. But I do wish they had eliminated the mild profanity I already encountered. I don't think it's necessary for the story, and it might offend some people. Also, the frequent loading from disk is somewhat distracting to the story, but at least it doesn't take long.

If the info about the keyboard was of benefit to you, it might be a good idea to click on the button here at Amazon which indicates you found the review helpful. If enough people do so, the review will appear on the first page, and will more likely be seen by others having the same problem.