Rating: 
Summary: So close to being the best!
Review: Boy, what an appropriately named adventure game! The title "Schizm", a bastardization of the word schism (Myst - mist, Schizm - schism, get it?), was probably meant to reflect the main twist of the game. The "division or separation" is realized by the ability to play the game through the eyes of either of the two main characters (one male and one female, of course) that have been separated not only by location but also by (surprise) parallel phases. Your job is, of course, to try and reunite them into the same phase while also trying to find the original inhabitants of the world in yet another alternate phase or some such.On the surface, this is a pretty neat little twist to the typical first person adventure genre and, for the most part, it succeeds in setting itself apart from the rest of the pack. But, I think there is another schism lurking beneath the surface: a small one between this game's reality and its true potential of being the all-time best adventure game. It came so very close to fulfilling that potential (at least the DVD version almost did). The drop-dead gorgeous 3D graphics, alone, vault this game into the upper echelons of the genre. To date, I think only Exile rivals this game in sheer beauty. Add to that a lush music score, some truly great puzzles to solve and some killer cut-scenes (although, the "Living Ship", once you get it to move, looks too Monty Python-ish to me!), you are just a breath away from being on the top rung. Then, there is the character acting. So many times these game designers have poured so many resources into their graphics, music and game design only to be tripped up by the amateurish actors they get to portray their characters! Timelapse is the classic example and, unfortunately, Schizm is much worse. Every time one of these characters popped onto the screen to try and tell me something about their plight, I just cringed. It got to the point where I didn't really care about them and had no incentive to try and save them. Even the occasional observations by the two main characters made me wish that they would just shut up. My last small gripe belongs to the conveyance cut-scenes. Most of the time, the animations traversed you only about a quarter of the way to your destination and then "faded" to the final quarter of the trip, leaving out about half of the journey. Maybe the designers had to do this for space considerations, but it drove me absolutely nuts! I SO wanted to experience the entire journeys at least once (the skyride from balloon to balloon being a perfect example). Then, on subsequent journeys from place to place (and you do have to do that A LOT), it would have made sense to allow you to skip the full animations with the spacebar or escape key. My dream is that they will release an "extended" version of this game with the full cut-scenes and better actors. Then it truly would be the best of the best. A sequel is in the works to be released later this year (Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will be THE ONE!
Rating: 
Summary: If you are given life sentence
Review: First of all, it must be said, as a specific warning, that in the end you will meet a double puzzle which you may, simply, not solve: one of those hideous, irritating chess-like. tris-like games you play not with the game, but with the computer: you win, you go on, you don't, you don't. Then, as a general warning, my impression is this: the author, quite obviously, rated his game the best possible in the world, and has structured it in such a way that you have to ramble continuously, repeatedly, randomly in the same gloomy locations trying to find clues, indications, in the - randomly - hope to activate ghosts that will tell you hints, and so on. So, if you are close in a prison cell with nothing apart from the computer and Schizm, best wishes, it is very difficult and not in a friendly way, it is challenging, it will make you quite intentionally feel dumb; but if the choice is, to play Schizm or to stare at a blank wall, well remember that anyway some Zen monks, throu staring at walls, reach illumination. Have a good time.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Game
Review: Game was worth the money. Many different tasks to complete. Nice graphics. Must have patience at some parts in the game though.
Rating: 
Summary: Impossible Puzzles But Incredible Graphics
Review: How do you make lemonade out of this lemon? The graphics on the DVD-ROM version are great, but the puzzles were next to impossible to figure out. I consider myself semi-intelligent when it comes to playing games where puzzle solving is involved, but this game made me feel stupid. I ended up buying the solutions guide for the DVD-ROM version just to save my sanity. Without that guide I would never have made it through most of the puzzles. The puzzles are not logical at all and the acting stunk. I've played several Dreamcatcher games and this is the first one I've been dissappointed with. Save your money and move on to something the average gameplayer has a chance with. Playing this game was a monumental waste of my time!!!
Rating:
Summary: BUY IT- LOVE the SCENERY, BUT A BIT CONFUSING
Review: I am a puzzle/adventure/story fanatic, all you out there who loved riddle of the sphinx, all myst series, crystal key, longest journey check this out!
Rating:
Summary: Aussie SF Master creates a Winner!
Review: I am not a gamer. At least I wasn't until I played Schizm and was drawn into its lush, exotic world. The reason I played it was that its storyline was created by award-winning fantasy and sf writer Terry Dowling. Like his stories and novels, the ambience of Schizm is full of strange wonders. A planet is deserted, apparently abandoned - your mission is solve the puzzles and find out why. Along the way you travel through breathtakingly beautiful alien scenery, travel in wondrous balloon-like flying contraptions, and meet the data-ghosts of the crewmembers from the mission here that went so wrong. Shoot-em-ups don't particularly interest me; this world intrigues, and (like MYST, which could be considered a predecessor to this game) is full of fascinating detail and brain-activating segues. If you've read Dowling's WORMWOOD or TOM TYSON stories, you'll know that he likes to tantalise; SCHIZM does this so well...
Dowling is currently working on a sequel game called CHAMELEON which is to be published soon. It promises to followup SCHIZM with another even MORE mysterious journey. Keep a lookout!
Rating:
Summary: Good game, but it crashed a lot.
Review: I bought this game and immediate liked it as I started to play. The graphics are wonderfully done. Unfortunately, every few minutes the game would crash. I never was able to continue with the game because of technical problems. This review refers to the DVD version of the game.
Rating:
Summary: Frustration, thy name is Schizm
Review: I bought this game for the graphics, and I must say they are stunningly beautiful. The problem is you don't get to see all of them unless you solve these ridiculous puzzles, and after only a few hours, I've given up on it. It's one thing to want to present the gamer with a challenge, but I don't believe you can get through this game without a walkthrough and cheat sheet, and using one all the time is just plain annoying. It takes all the fun out of it. Furthermore, if I wanted to spend all my time learning symbols and equations, I'd go back to high school math class. And it wasn't enough to have to learn new symbols and number base systems, they had to add sound and color to the puzzle mix. Enough is enough. Who are they trying to impress ? Give us a break Dreamcatcher and give us a beautiful game we don't have to tear our hair out to get through.
Rating:
Summary: disapointing on all acounts
Review: I first bought the cd version of this game and was shocked at how poor the quality of the graphics were. I then decided to give the DVD version a try because that used hardware acceleration and it should look better. It did look better but was still a little choppy. Another problem I had was that you couldnt install the DVD version so that you could run it off of the hard drive, so when I am playing the game the dvd rom is running all of the time and is loud so i have to turn the volume up. Third, the acting is incredibly terrible in this game. Finally, I had a lot of trouble even playing the game because sometimes my dvd rom couldn't read the disc. This has never happened before and all the DVDs or CDs ive ever put into it worked fine. I am going to return this game on Monday and hopefully get my money back. If you like the Myst style adventure games then you should try Myst 3: Exile. That is an excellent game. However, stay as far away as possible from Schizm!
Rating: 
Summary: Feels like another planet but is otherwise uninteresting
Review: I played this DVD game for all but two hours and got tired of it. It does feel like you are truely on another planet and the visual animation is very realistic, eg. rippling water, ect; but it is very hard to control your movement and the two centeral characters are terrible actors and I hate hearing thier voices. The puzzels are solvable but not brain teasers, just having to write simbols on paper and copy what they say(I hate copying). Most of the puzzles are not logical, if you work with them enough you can solve them without even thinking! A cut scene or two at the beginning at least would have been nice instead of that cheezy narration and slide show. What else is there in adventure games? Control- irritating,
Puzzles- mindless at times(just take notes),
cut-scenes- non existant,
character interaction- non exsitant except for brief ghostly visits which you can't talk too.
Acting- terrible.
One thing you want in an adventure game is at least ONE of these things to be good. I have played adventure games in the past and for a while they were good, but it seems lately they are just cheezy put-together's. I guess because PC games are mainstream and most mainstreamers like action.
If you like pretty java effects(DVD) buy it, otherwise, don't waste your money.
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