Rating: 
Summary: for those who enjoy solving tough puzzles
Review: i started the cd version on a friends windows computer (i have a mac), but i didnt have adequate access to really give the game the concentration it requires. for this reason, i went out and bought a last year's model windows computer and the dvd version of schizm. of course, this gave me access to many superb games not available to mac, but schizm was the main reason for the purchase. let me also add that the dvd is not more convenient (you have to keep flipping it), but the visual quality is better than the cd, and there is an extra tough puzzle (the telescope). schizm is not a true adventure game, but one that has a rather silly story to serve as a framework for its puzzles (think the myst series)the other reviews all come to the same conclusion: beautiful and very hard. the scenes are surreal and - i hate to use this word - stunning; whoever thought these up had a hell of an imagination. living floating islands, a city of huge balloons, a partially ruined temple cut into rock, and this is only part. the puzzles are difficult, more so than riven, but i only found one obnoxious, where in a village, you had to enter each house twice, and leave it only once; this was pure trial and error, and i looked up the answer. all the other problems are well within the capability of one who has high school arithmetic, as there is a triangle problem which involves simple proportion, no trig (kind of like pegging off distances across rivers in boy scouts). there is 360 degree panning at all points, with the novel feature of the directional keys causing rotation in 45 degree increments, if desired. another novel feature is the necessity of teaming up by the two characters, even though they cant see each other, in order to solve problems. this game carries a very small inventory, one or two items, and trial and error are not necessary as the use of each object is quite obvious. other reviewers constant gripes concerned the acting, but i consider this unimportant in this type of game; after all, the Millers (sirius, achernar, and atrus(acrux?)) are pretty bad, too, but their games are classics. it appears from the credits that this game is of polish origin, and there are some areas where it could use some extra polish before it reaches the level of refinement of, say, riven. example 1: for the problem of filling the balloon with gas, the directions are run by very fast and not altogether clearly. if you miss part of it you dont get to hear it again. there should be a log to record these directions for reference. The solution to this problem is very clever. start with zero. example 2: the cut scenes dont always run smoothly, especially the ones of the living islands floating away. they freeze, but i lost no saves or progress on restarting. this may be due to XP, but i cant say for sure. example 3: several times in the game, mystical hand signals are given, when saying directly would have been just as good. when indicating that another pearl was needed, the planetary denizen raised one finger and said nothing. i thought that meant to go upstairs. but it was no problem finding and getting tne extra pearl. another time, bilateral chopping motions were given with the hands to indicate to close a door. the actor could simply have said that a door needed to be closed. (this caused a major hangup in my game). all in all, this game is one of outstanding beauty, with puzzles to match. if you dont like these very difficult problems, buy the longest journey or syberia (both excellent), but if you liked riven, i think youll like schizm. incidentally, i read a sequel is coming out called Mysterious Journey.
Rating: 
Summary: Watchable but not Playable
Review: I was anxious to get this game as I had read about it in the months prior to its release. I was especially excited to get the DVD-ROM version. But then I began to play it and my excitement rapidly turned to disappointment. The game is beautiful to look at. The scenery is absolutely amazing. But that is only the backdrop. The game is a total dud. First of all, I found alot of the puzzles extremely complicated and could not solve them without a walk through. The one that is the most ridiculous is the pillar measurement. I read the walk through, solved the puzzle, but I still don't get it. Now to the acting. The 2 people through whom you can act out (Hannah and Sam) are OK. But the people on the mission logs are absurd. I think they pulled these people off the streets and asked them to read some lines while they recorded it. And alot of the time, the words don't seem to be in sync with the mouth. And the one woman on the mission log was extremely irritating and she had to smoke a cigarette while making the log. What was that all about? Save your money and play Riven again or wait for the next Tex Murphy installment.
Rating: 
Summary: Schizm - Fizm
Review: I'm not a much of a gamer. You may buy this game for the discount price.
I got this for the impressive graphics. I fail to see anyone solving this without a walkthrough or a decade. The puzzles have some logic but are not related well enough to solve. Many reset themsleves if you save the game or leave the area. Even with a walkthrough, I spent too much travelling to get from clue to solution.
I saw better acting in my high school drama club. Some of the verbal/audio clues were not understandable. If it were not for the walk through I would not have had them. I even saved the game and ran through a number of times at these spots with no luck.
Running 2 characters was fine but having to gather them up near the end and keep them together was quite an annoyance.
Then the hangs. I ran my P4 with no TSR's and still had crashes. That required full reboots and killing of the TSR's.
The beautiful graphics and intrique do not make up for the shortfalls above. I really felt that I wasted my time when I had experienced the chopped off poorly contrived ending.
Sad adventure.
Rating:
Summary: im sure the game is great, but im having a problem with it..
Review: im not officially reviewing this game. Rather, I'm posting this in hopes that someone who is having the same problem with this game that i am might be able to help me! I cannot get it to play for more than 5 minutes or so before it crashes and I must restart my system. I have the DVD-Rom and CD-Rom versions of this game and both act the same. The game's site has produced no resutls and I've gotten no response from the site's webmaster. My system is technically ample for this game, and i see no reason for it not to work. If anyone else has encountered this problem, let me know. Im sure this game is spectacular! I just have to get it to run! IXX
repster@san.rr.com
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting and intrigueing
Review: Immersive navigation and beautiful graphics.
Puzzles can be a little tricky at times.
DVD version recommended.
If you enjoyed Myst Exile, you will love Schizm.
Rating: 
Summary: Cut your teeth on Myst Games first before this one!
Review: In the middle of the game now. Everyone is right the puzzles are hard but the graphics are beautiful. Game plays great after discovering that Direct CD was interfering and causing instant crashing, total reboot in the middle of the game. Have the DVD version and it runs quite nicely. Interesting concept, playing between two different characters. Makes the game less boring. If you get stuck on a puzzle, work the other character. So far, my boyfriend and I are really enjoying the game. Hope we don't get stuck for too long!
Rating: 
Summary: graphics are great but puzzles will annoy you
Review: Ok....the only reason why i chose to put 3 starts instead of 2 is because of the graphics, which are, in fact, VERY good. When it comes to the puzzles...the 1st one wasn't that bad after figuring it out you will solve it, but most of the puzzles are hard. After sitting for hours, trying to find clues to the puzzle, I almost ripped my hair out! It gets so frustrating looking for an answer that I gave up and decided to print a walkthrough. My ONLY solution. I guarantee you that you will love the graphics and watching the railway carts come to you, or the floating island travel. But I must say that after I was done with the game, thanks to the walkthrough, it didn't leave a mark, it just had me saying, "this is it???? this is the end? okkkkkk" the ending is pretty dull and I expected to finally meet with the aliens that I was suppose to "free". Graphics=good, gameplay and puzzles=annoying
Rating:
Summary: stunning visuals and sounds but disappointing game
Review: Original Thoughts upon first starting the game: I have the DVD version of this game, and this is the first day I have played it. I have to say the install went well, very few options to choose from in the DVD version. Apparently in the CD ROM version you can select how much to load onto the HDD, but you don't get that option here. According to the website, this is most likely because the speed of a DVD rom drive is so fast, there is no need. Unfortunately, despite the speed of the DVD drive, the game play is so choppy that it's unplayable. The recommendation from the vendor web site says that if your game play is choppy, turn the sound/music off. That doesn't make for a very interesting game if you don't have music in the background. (I did turn the music off, and it does make a difference, but the choppy scrolling and pausing is still there, plus, no music). The game seems to pause the DVD every time you finish scrolling or moving, which means it has to spin back up if you want to move and scroll again. This on a P4 machine seems a bit too problematic for the game to be any fun at all. I agree wholeheartedly with other reviews too, the acting is a bit blah. When you read mission logs from some of the scientists, you can see them reading from cue cards pretty much. Though, the game isn't about the acting, it's about the puzzle solving. Just for grins, I went onto the vendor web site and looked in the game hints section. I have to say that the first hint presented on the page is simply mind boggling. Not only are there random sequences built into the game so that each game is different, and each time you play it it is different, but all the mathematics involved seems to be quite counter intuitive. I'm not a meteorologist, so tracking weather patterns isn't my forte. So I have no clue how to get past the main first puzzle without reading that hint. All in all, after only 30 minutes of game play, i'm quite disappointed. There is one thing to make a puzzle challenging, quite another to make it so random that game play ceases to be fun. Final thoughts after finishing the game - I have finished the game now. Amazingly quickly. Mostly because after you visit three worlds...that's it. Done. There are so many features of the game, and especially of the ship that you never get to learn about because the game ends so abruptly. I was able to get around a lot of the choppy game play by disabling all virus scanning programs before starting the game, as well as closing any other open programs (even things like my printer manager). Again, many more hard and counterintuitive puzzles through the rest of the game. There were some neat sound effects with bells you had to ring in certain orders, etc...and cool water effects. Unfortunately, since I had worked so hard on the puzzles, i felt like the end of the game was a real let-down. There should have been several more worlds to encounter before solving the game, and much more of the vivid scenario that you should be able to interact with. It's almost as if the game ended just as it got really interesting :-)
Rating:
Summary: No DVD will solve the painful acting.
Review: Putting this on a DVD versus the CDs other people have doesn't solve the painful wooden acting. I couldn't believe that what I had read about how bad it was could be true, but it is. I can handle puzzles that are ridculous, as I can use a walkthrough, but I still have to listen to the "actors", in a term used loosely here. Their voices are simply not pleasant game voices that keep me inspired to play... and those games reading this will know examples of good ones and what I'm referring to. % I've finally had to stop playing, and not because the puzzles, but because it simply isn't a fun game to play by controlling the two characters. It really is nothing better than an interactive screen-saver, and the lack of "going for it" with the company making this is seen all too well. If you're going to make a game, make a game... but if you don't want to give it what it takes, it is so very easy to see where it comes up short, and there's the main overlying problem [the problem, versus the plethora of symptoms seen because of it].
Rating:
Summary: A bit more complicated than you would think
Review: Schizm was one of those games that just left me scratching my head. I've been playing adventure games for years, and this one tops the charts as being one of the most difficult I've ever played. I have to admit, I had to consult cheats online to solve some of the puzzles. For instance, to make the balloon work, you have to click on each one of the levers the same number of times as the number it would be on a clock, while you move around it clockwise. So the first lever would be 1 click, second, 2 clicks, etc. And that was just to figure out the air level you needed. Arrrgh. I have no idea how someone would be able to figure that out on their own. As far as graphics and soundtrack go, this game rocks. The scenery is beautiful, and very life-like. The gameplay was very intuitive, but it seemed to take forever to get from one point to another. One great feature was the ability to switch back and forth between 2 different characters. That was a brilliant idea on the developers' part, because it keeps you from getting bored with being in 1 location. (Especially if you're stuck). My only complaint, aside from the puzzles that ranged from easy to insanely difficult, would be the fact that the game kept crashing in the same spots. I found a way around most of them, but it was rather annoying to have to keep restarting the game. Typical Dreamcatcher feature. :-)
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