Crystal Key (Jewel Case)

Rating:
Summary: good quality for bargin bin price
Review: First off, I got this game at the bargin bin price at walmart as it is now sold here. Originally this game sold at full price(never get full price bug ridden games people!) After patch 1.1 the game even runs on XP on a super fast machine with little problem. Those of you who have knocked this game have not patched it yet. Most people(I assume) first think of patching the games they get but some of you(quite odviously) don't go to websites to find answeres to the problems.
The game is set on different planets accessed via gateways. Of course thier are other ways as well via darth vader zapping you and taking you aboard his ship ect. It has a retro sci-fi feel to it which I like and it is set in eerie mysterious places. (Mostly dark dungeon-like places and gloomy spaceship corridors). Unfortunately interacting with other people is nearly non-existant, but it is still intruguing and fun. If you like far fetched sci-fi and otherworldy exploration go for it! this game ain't worth no 40 bux but it curtainly is worth 10. I am surprised it is such a popular item and is being sequaled considering all the knocks against it. I like it!

Rating:
Summary: good quality for bargin bin price
Review: First off, I got this game at the bargin bin price at walmart as it is now sold here. Originally this game sold at full price(never get full price bug ridden games people!) After patch 1.1 the game even runs on XP on a super fast machine with little problem. Those of you who have knocked this game have not patched it yet. Most people(I assume) first think of patching the games they get but some of you(quite odviously) don't go to websites to find answeres to the problems.
The game is set on different planets accessed via gateways. Of course thier are other ways as well via darth vader zapping you and taking you aboard his ship ect. It has a retro sci-fi feel to it which I like and it is set in eerie mysterious places. (Mostly dark dungeon-like places and gloomy spaceship corridors). Unfortunately interacting with other people is nearly non-existant, but it is still intruguing and fun. If you like far fetched sci-fi and otherworldy exploration go for it! this game ain't worth no 40 bux but it curtainly is worth 10. I am surprised it is such a popular item and is being sequaled considering all the knocks against it. I like it!

Rating:
Summary: Not too bad
Review: The Crystal Key is a pretty nice game. However, XP USERS BEWARE!!! If you plan to play this game using Win XP, prepare for the hardest puzzle of the game...getting it to run properly (The website for this game said it was "completely compatible" with XP). There are som patches to download to help with many performance issues in the game, but I couldn't get them to install properly either. The website for this game recommended playing the game in "Win 98/Me compatibility mode" to solve the issues that the patches were supposed to fix, but this crashes the game and you get an open file dialog looking for .run files. How I got the game to actually work was to set my monitor resolution to 640x480 when the game runs. Right-click on the .exe file for the game and select properties. Click on the compatibility tab and then click on the option to change monitor resolution to 640x480 when this file executes. This didn't solve all problems, but at least I was able to play the game. Save often because you will need to prepare for the in-game bugs too (i.e. restoring a saved game, travelling to a world you just left, CHANGING THE CDs DURING THE GAME). The game itself is fun. The graphics are fairly decent, but when you are in motion, things blur with pixelation. The ambient sounds are either nice or annoying. Some times, the sounds are just repeating sound clips that are only a few seconds long. The puzzles are what make the game fun. They are not trivial nor are they too hard. With a few notes, some drawing, and a little memory (your memory, not the computer's), the puzzles can be solved in a good matter of time. Overall, I believe the developer needs to spend more time in the debugging process to fix the annoying bugs. This would eliminate the need to download patches that don't even work. I speak from experience on this. I am a professional software developer and the company I work for has a debugging period of up to one month and then beta testing. If you want to play this game, DO NOT pay more than $10 for it (that price is almost too high and I do not like to buy bugs) and if possible, play the game with Win 98.

Rating:
Summary: A reasonably fun game
Review: The Crystal Key is a pretty nice game. However, XP USERS BEWARE!!! If you plan to play this game using Win XP, prepare for the hardest puzzle of the game...getting it to run properly (The website for this game said it was "completely compatible" with XP). There are som patches to download to help with many performance issues in the game, but I couldn't get them to install properly either. The website for this game recommended playing the game in "Win 98/Me compatibility mode" to solve the issues that the patches were supposed to fix, but this crashes the game and you get an open file dialog looking for .run files. How I got the game to actually work was to set my monitor resolution to 640x480 when the game runs. Right-click on the .exe file for the game and select properties. Click on the compatibility tab and then click on the option to change monitor resolution to 640x480 when this file executes. This didn't solve all problems, but at least I was able to play the game. Save often because you will need to prepare for the in-game bugs too (i.e. restoring a saved game, travelling to a world you just left, CHANGING THE CDs DURING THE GAME). The game itself is fun. The graphics are fairly decent, but when you are in motion, things blur with pixelation. The ambient sounds are either nice or annoying. Some times, the sounds are just repeating sound clips that are only a few seconds long. The puzzles are what make the game fun. They are not trivial nor are they too hard. With a few notes, some drawing, and a little memory (your memory, not the computer's), the puzzles can be solved in a good matter of time. Overall, I believe the developer needs to spend more time in the debugging process to fix the annoying bugs. This would eliminate the need to download patches that don't even work. I speak from experience on this. I am a professional software developer and the company I work for has a debugging period of up to one month and then beta testing. If you want to play this game, DO NOT pay more than $10 for it (that price is almost too high and I do not like to buy bugs) and if possible, play the game with Win 98.

Rating:
Summary: Not too bad
Review: While the previous reviewer is correct in that the game may not run on XP out of the box, a couple of e-mails exchanged with the tech support solve the problem very quickly (for me, the answer was to uninstall quicktime and reinstall it from the CD with certain settings changes). If you have Win98, don't worry about this problem - you won't have it.

Now for the game itself - it's very well designed. You get the hang of the interface fairly quickly. For the most part, the puzzles are both creative and reasonable. Some, however, are very unintuitive and require finding very obscure, hidden objects, or using an object in a manner you'd never think of. Some puzzles require you to have visited an area that you might not even have known about. Don't be afraid to take a peek at uhs-hints.com if despite your most dilligent reasoning you cannot come up with a solution.

The environments are on the whole quite pleasant, with the exception of one - the jungle. Every node you can walk to looks just like every other one and you must therefore navigate by trial and error.

A minus of this game is that there is no character interaction at all - in fact, there are no characters except in cut scenes. Characters added new dimensions and intrigue to games like Legacy of Time and Myst III as well as many others. Here you walk through "abandoned" worlds.

Similarly, there is virtually no storyline development as you play the game - you have a vague idea of a mission (to find out how to bring down the bad guy) and that's what you do through the entire game.

On the whole, however, the gameplay experience can be quite pleasant, if you peek at some hints when you're stuck.