Rating: 
Summary: Stunning but Tough
Review: I have just finished reading a number of the reviews for Schizm and I cannot understand people complaining about the difficulty in solving some of the puzzles in this glorious game. Isn't that the point? The graphics are beautiful. The story-line is good enough for an adventure game. The music and effects are on a par with the Myst Trilogy and the like. The added twist of having two main characters who must cooperate to accomplish some tasks is another nice touch. I installed the CD-ROM version to my hard drive and the game played flawlessly. I did have a bit of trouble controlling the pan rate using the mouse, but soon discovered that the arrow keys provided a solution with the left and right arrows yielding a a 45 degree pan left or right, while the up and down arrows allowed a 180 degree switch (very useful when you realize you went the wrong way and simply want to turn around and go back.) My only complaint would be the inability to terminate a video scene. While the videos are wonderful, deep into a game it would have been nice to be able to skip to the end... a small price to pay for a truly challenging game.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but more frustrating than fun
Review: I'm generally not a fan of Myst clones, but after playing RealMyst and Myst 3 I was beginning to come around. Unfortunately Schizm didn't do much to improve my feelings for the genre. The world of Schizm is an imaginative and intriguing one, and by far the best thing going for the game. Unfortunately, incredibly difficult puzzles, a thin plot, and terrible graphics take most of the fun out of your exploration. I will note that I played the CD version of the game, and by many accounts the DVD version is much better. As I said, the world of Schizm is an interesting one. Not well fleshed out, but full of interesting technology and places. Many of the puzzles revolve around the various machines you will find as you explore the world, and many of these are fascinating inventions. The other strong point of the game was the use of two characters, and puzzles that utilized this concept. The ability to switch back and forth between the two characters was anice outlet when presented with a particularly nasty puzzle. Unfortunately the plot of Schizm is pretty weak, displayed through a series of video clips. However, several plot points didn't seem to happen at all, and those we did see were difficult to understand. Furthermore, the graphics in Schizm are TERRIBLE. As the DVD version seems to have much better graphics, I can only guess the development company dropped the ball with regards to compression techniques. In addition, the puzzles in Schizm can be VERY difficult. I was forced to seek help online for numerous puzzles, many of which seemed to have rather arbitrary solutions. While the ability to use two characters to solve some puzzles was enjoyable, many puzzles where it was required to use both characters were difficult to identify as such. I was hoping to enjoy this game, but in the end it was more pain than it was worth. Skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Schizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzm
Review: This game is of minor interest only if you've ever spent any time staring at a Yes album cover by Roger Dean and thought: "what would it be like to walk around in there?" But then the meandering gets very tedious, the puzzles get more and more convlouted, the crappy graphics start to lose thier luster, etc etc. Someone PLEASE tell me that MYST is better than this(?)
Rating: 
Summary: Good Graphics, Average performance, Bad User Friendliness
Review: I bought the CD-ROM version. Graphics was Good, but not as good as Myst. I run on XP, program freezes occassionally. No clean way to exit when the video is active. Operation wise, once the character starts going in one direction, it is hard to make him/her stop and take a turn using your mouse. Another very annoying thing is that even after doing a complete install (3 GB), it still insists on having the CD-ROM (Disk 1) in the drive All the time. I mean, what is the point ? If you use a laptop like me, your Game CD will have to follow you wherever your laptop goes. And as you have to take this CD with you everywhere, it is very easy to damage/ lose it and that makes the remaining 4 CDs useless. Your only option is to go buy the entire set again. Did I mention that the CD is copy protected as well ?? I wish game developers spent less time on their paranoia about copy protection and rather spend more on improving performance and user experience. I heard the DVD version has better graphics. I am not sure if you always have to have the DVD in the drive, though.
Rating: 
Summary: A great game yet difficult...
Review: 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...
Rating:
Summary: Don't bother! Just throw your money away instead!
Review: I purchased thsi game in the discount section of a local retailer thinking I would have a good alternative to the usual first person shooter clones that are flooding the market. After starting up the game and watching the two main characters do their thing It became quickly apparent that no matter what I tried to do the curser indicated that no action was possible for me. I guesss the game consists of installing it, watching the intro, and then uninstalling it. Not as I expected at all. Moreover the game is unsupported. My copy is in the trash now! I Wish I had the money I spent on it instead! In my opinion a genuine Rip Off!
Rating:
Summary: Schizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzm
Review: This game is of minor interest only if you've ever spent any time staring at a Yes album cover by Roger Dean and thought: "what would it be like to walk around in there?" But then the meandering gets very tedious, the puzzles get more and more convlouted, the crappy graphics start to lose thier luster, etc etc. Someone PLEASE tell me that MYST is better than this(?)
Rating:
Summary: ummm- does this make the slightest bit of sense
Review: While the gameplay was enjoyable, and the puzzles may have been difficult- I needed help and I had gotten through Riven and Myst III in 2 days a piece, I found that I could not get into the fun. The tasks seemed more laborious than puzzles, and the graphics were absolutely terrible. I found it difficult and annoying to change characters and disliked the funky camera angles. At some points, you seem 5 feet off the ground and at others about 8. The storyline was also terrible- I still do not completely understand what the logic is behind what happened where and who the heck the gatekeeper and Matia are. There are also no ways to fail- failure is an option in real life.
The main purpose for buying this game was to see great graphics, piece together a great storyline, and to tackle mediocre to hard puzzles. This game provided none of the above. Yuck
Rating:
Summary: A good challenge - but buy the DVD
Review: First of all, the gameplay. The game is definitely difficult and some of the puzzles are potentially real stumpers. Some degree of mathematical insight is certainly required to solve them. One problem I have with the puzzles is that they are not logically arranged. For instance, after progressing some distance through the game you reach a point where you have to return one (and perhaps both) characters to the point where they started the game to obtain something necessary to continue the game that cannot be obtained at the beginning. There is also an object that can be obtained from the beginning that is not essential to progress beyond the start of the game, but becomes vital later on, and it would be easy to leave the beginning without obtaining it. Problems like that add to the difficulty of the game. Things are made easier, however, by a limited number of inventory items, and the fact that if you hold the right inventory item for performing a task the computer automatically selects it for you. Several of the puzzles are mathematically oriented. While I can usually work out mathematically related puzzles, I still can't determine the logic behind one of them (translating the old to new co-ordinates) as it seems that in the alien number system you carry numbers between some columns but not others. Another difficult mathematical puzzle, the triangle puzzle, was rendered impossible in my game by the graphics not being good enough to show the readings on the relevant instruments. This forced me to revert to a walkthrough to solve these puzzles, which was unsatisfying. The rest of the puzzles generally were solvable (although a lot of logic needs to be applied, including drawing up lookup tables to determine patterns etc) but often lacked a real logic to them in terms of game story (like the houses which you must enter twice but leave once). This is in contrast to the puzzles in the Myst series, which are closely ingrained with the storyline and make good sense in the context of the universes created. The puzzles in Schizm seem to be there purely for the sake of vexing and perplexing the visitor, which is unsatisfying in terms of storyline. The storyline also doesn't make an awful lot of sense (there is a very contrived explanation as to why your two characters can't see one another, even when standing next to each other), but what the heck. I also had a real problem with the acting, which is appalling. If you think the acting in most computer games is bad, you'll think it is Oscar material compared to that in Schizm. I understand that the actors are not natural English speakers, but the game makers could at least have cheaply hired a voice actor to overdub their lines. Now some technical points. I bought the CD version of this game. As many of the reviews below indicate, this game was initially designed for DVD, and has suffered in the translation to CD. The biggest problem is the graphics. The game has a lavish production design but the compression required to convert the game to CD has resulted in blurry and indistinct graphics at some points. Mostly this is merely an aesthetic problem, but when you can't read numbers on dials or key sets of co-ordinates, it's a much bigger issue. Were it not for walkthroughs I simply wouldn't have been able to solve one of the puzzles purely due to bad graphics. There are also some objects which were very hard to distinguish for the same reason. Unless you do a full install of all 5 CDs (which I would highly recommend, although you will need lots of disk space) you will need to change CDs frequently. One thing adding to the problem of swapping CDs is that you control two characters who must be moved independently - so when moving both characters from location A to location B you need to walk each character along the path one at a time. It would have assisted if the programmers had enabled you to move both characters together, and included a 'zip' mode as there is a lot of pacing back and forth through familiar territory. Finally, there are more quicktime movies containing hints that are on the DVD version but are not on the CD version. The DVD also has an additional puzzle. All in all - it's a difficult adventure, but if you want to be able to solve it yourself you may have big problems using the CD version, due to graphical problems.
Rating:
Summary: Yuck
Review: This might have been a great game: if it had been released about six years ago. This game is a Myst clone that came out about five years too late. "Clone" is a bit too much of a compliment. ... is a slightly better phrase, because this game falls short of the excellent series that it aspires to be. The graphics for the game are simply awful. The screen looks like a drenched comic book that just got pulled out of the gutter. Perhaps it is because the game is fixed at 640X480 resolution when most computers can go way higher. It looks like some effort was put into the artwork for the game, but it is spoiled by the smeared-out, grainy look that occupies every screen. "Riven" is much older and looks better. So does "Grim Fandango". The voice acting is abominable, and so is the acting for the game's in-game movies. I thought that we got rid of those years ago when everyone realized how cheesy they were. If the game had a good premise, then the poor production values wouldn't matter very much, but it doesn't. It's another "abandoned world full of weird machines" game. This time, it's an alien world. A good puzzle game has to have puzzles that fit into the virtual world. Unfortunately, "Schizm" has lots of contrived puzzles that don't make sense. Want to walk across a bridge? Figure out how to push a series of 20 buttons in the right order. Don't expect to just push one button. Apparently, aliens are extremely bored geniuses who have nothing better to do than build complicated contraptions that confuse Earthling scientists. I wonder if aliens have to push a series of color-coded buttons in a special order to operate a toothbrush. I'll give the game props for having good music and, yes, the puzzles are very difficult. If you are up for a challenge, they will definitely do that. It's hard to get interested in them though, since the game always constrains you along a tight path instead of letting you explore a 3D world. That's another big fault that this game has when you compare it to other adventure games. Here's a tip: skip this one unless you have played all other adventure games that you want to play first. I played "Myst", "Riven", "Sanitarium", and the "Syberia" demo, and they are all better than "Schizm".
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