Rating: 
Summary: Not for most
Review: I was pretty disappointed with this game and definitely regret buying it. I like adventure games to a point, but this one is pretty much just for hardcore puzzle fans. Some of the puzzles will require you to sit for hours writing formulas and graphs to try and figure out. Most of the time I found it faster to keep pressing random buttons and let luck do the work.
Basically, if you LOVE puzzles, this game will keep you entertained for quite some time, otherwise stay away.
Rating: 
Summary: the best adventure releases of 2003
Review: I'd recommend this game to almost any adventure gamer that enjoys first
person puzzle-oriented adventure games. The game has quite steep hardware
requirements, but it really rewards the owners of state of the art video
card with breathtaking visuals, rivaling those seen in pre-rendered
adventures despite the fact that the game renders everything in real-time.
The puzzles are sometimes difficult, but fair. The storyline is interesting
and the player meets over 15 characters, sometimes really weird-looking,
although there's no inter-character interaction in the game - just
cutscenes. The music sets the mood, the sound effects are rich. The
interface is as easy as it can get, offering total freedom of movement and
view. One of the best adventure releases of 2003.
Rating:
Summary: Adventure fan's dreamworld...
Review: I've been lucky to have been playing this for a week - and it's superb. Don't expect running around shooting things in this full 3D adventure - it's just puzzle solving pure and simple, all at your own pace and in your own time. From the makers of Schizm, this game has all the beauty of the original title and dreamlike quality coupled with puzzles to keep you awake for weeks. The graphics are quite frankly excellent... using the NOLF 2 Jupiter engine to render some highly complex scenery. The plot it also pretty damn good, with well done cutscenes and some odd costumes. If you're a Myst fan, and your computer can cut this on full detail (it's quite a performance tester) then by all means buy it. Expect negative reviews from FPS freaks and people who get frustrated by the logical but rock puzzles though... Brilliant!
Rating:
Summary: Every bit as good as Schizm
Review: If you enjoyed Schizm, you'll like Chameleon.The graphics are superb. The puzzles are challenging (but logical, for the most part). Just as in Schizm, some involve alternative number bases. Unlike real stinkers, like Rhem, the clues are typically local to the puzzles, or the puzzles themselves are self-consistent; you don't have to wander all over the place looking for clues. Schizm's weakest point - the live action - has been replaced by computer generated characters, and professional voiceover actors. It's a great improvement. Chameleon has full motion, using the conventional combination of mouse and keyboard. This is somewhat of a mixed blessing; there is a definite risk of motion sickness if you're watching someone else play, particularly if you have a large monitor. Be warned; the game makes significant demands on your system. Frame rates can be quite low in some of the scenes. You may have to reduce resolution to cope with this. I've read some very negative reviews; I can only imagine that the reviewers misunderstood the nature of the game. It isn't a shooter, lads. Definitely worth buying.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than MJ 1 by a long shot
Review: In the opening movie of Mysterious Journey 2, you wake up on a space station. A recorded message informs you that you have been in cryogenic sleep for 200-odd years as punishment for "betraying your planet." Apparently you were involved in some kind of war that, 2 centuries before, all but wiped out the planet (Sarpedon) and everyone on it. Furthermore, the recording informs you, the space station will fall out of orbit in a number of days and waking you up to experience this event is also part of your punishment. But before the recording can tell you anything else, an energy surge destroys it and you are left....alone? MJ 2 is a 1st person game with numerous 3rd person cutscenes as you progress. Let's get the tech out of the way: this game requires a computer no more than a year old or so, with a good video card. The game (on three discs) fully installs to the tune of several gigs of hard drive space. Once installed, is does not need any disc inserted to run--a plus, in my book. As you might expect from the requirements, MJ 2 is graphically stunning. There's lots of subtle animation, from the movement of water, to trees swaying in he breeze, to insects fluttering around lamps: in every location, something is moving. The character rendering is also quite good, although character movement in the cutscenes is a little jerky. The sound, however, is a little weak. Music consists of the same tape loops repeated over and over again, with no variation between locations, and f/x mainly consists of blowing wind and mechanical humming. The voice acting was decent, but in several places the f/x drowns out the dialog. There is no separate volume controls for dialog and f/x, nor are there any subtitles. So there were places where I really couldn't hear what was being said. You can get a dialog transcript from the main menu, but there were inexplicable gaps in that transcript. Fortunately, you didn't really need the dialog to play the game, but I still found it annoying. You can navigate either with the keyboard or the mouse or both. Movement is absolutely unrestricted, which was nice. There were only 3 mouse cursors to worry about: the general navigation cursor, the "activity here" cursor, and the warp cursor, which took you between locations. New locations took several seconds to load, but movement within a location was smooth and fast. Though there is a story behind your actions, essentially MJ2 is a puzzle-heavy game. Puzzles lead to new locations, which lead to more puzzles and so on. I found that most of the puzzles were on the easy to medium-hard side. When I got stuck, it was more likely that I was making the puzzle more complicated than it really was; thinking in simpler terms often led to a solution. Many of the puzzles are math-based, so if you don't have a mathematical mind, you might not like this game. Attention to details of the environment is a must, as is note-taking. There are a few inventory puzzles, but you generally used your inventory immediately, in the location in which you found it. There are no timed puzzles and you can't die, but there are a few places where you can get backed into a corner, so saving before and after each puzzle is essential. There are an unlimited number of save slots available to accomodate this, plus the game auto-saves at each new location. The one thing that really bothered me about this game was that about half the time, completing a puzzle led to an area where nothing at all happened except that you got to look at some scenery. So you might spend an hour trying to get into a room and only three seconds in there, which made me wonder why I had bothered. I think the puzzles could have been integrated into the game better. As it was, the plot seemed almost an afterthought, stuck in to make an adventure out of what was mainly a series of puzzles for puzzles' sake. I took about 30 hours to complete MJ 2 at the rate of 1 or 2 puzzles a night; it was not a game that absorbed or inspired me to keep playing for hours and hours on end. I liked it better than MJ1--it was far better constructed and far more comprehensible. If you like puzzles you'll probably like this game. If you're looking for a complex story and character interaction, probably not so much.
Rating:
Summary: Better than MJ 1 by a long shot
Review: In the opening movie of Mysterious Journey 2, you wake up on a space station. A recorded message informs you that you have been in cryogenic sleep for 200-odd years as punishment for "betraying your planet." Apparently you were involved in some kind of war that, 2 centuries before, all but wiped out the planet (Sarpedon) and everyone on it. Furthermore, the recording informs you, the space station will fall out of orbit in a number of days and waking you up to experience this event is also part of your punishment. But before the recording can tell you anything else, an energy surge destroys it and you are left....alone? MJ 2 is a 1st person game with numerous 3rd person cutscenes as you progress. Let's get the tech out of the way: this game requires a computer no more than a year old or so, with a good video card. The game (on three discs) fully installs to the tune of several gigs of hard drive space. Once installed, is does not need any disc inserted to run--a plus, in my book. As you might expect from the requirements, MJ 2 is graphically stunning. There's lots of subtle animation, from the movement of water, to trees swaying in he breeze, to insects fluttering around lamps: in every location, something is moving. The character rendering is also quite good, although character movement in the cutscenes is a little jerky. The sound, however, is a little weak. Music consists of the same tape loops repeated over and over again, with no variation between locations, and f/x mainly consists of blowing wind and mechanical humming. The voice acting was decent, but in several places the f/x drowns out the dialog. There is no separate volume controls for dialog and f/x, nor are there any subtitles. So there were places where I really couldn't hear what was being said. You can get a dialog transcript from the main menu, but there were inexplicable gaps in that transcript. Fortunately, you didn't really need the dialog to play the game, but I still found it annoying. You can navigate either with the keyboard or the mouse or both. Movement is absolutely unrestricted, which was nice. There were only 3 mouse cursors to worry about: the general navigation cursor, the "activity here" cursor, and the warp cursor, which took you between locations. New locations took several seconds to load, but movement within a location was smooth and fast. Though there is a story behind your actions, essentially MJ2 is a puzzle-heavy game. Puzzles lead to new locations, which lead to more puzzles and so on. I found that most of the puzzles were on the easy to medium-hard side. When I got stuck, it was more likely that I was making the puzzle more complicated than it really was; thinking in simpler terms often led to a solution. Many of the puzzles are math-based, so if you don't have a mathematical mind, you might not like this game. Attention to details of the environment is a must, as is note-taking. There are a few inventory puzzles, but you generally used your inventory immediately, in the location in which you found it. There are no timed puzzles and you can't die, but there are a few places where you can get backed into a corner, so saving before and after each puzzle is essential. There are an unlimited number of save slots available to accomodate this, plus the game auto-saves at each new location. The one thing that really bothered me about this game was that about half the time, completing a puzzle led to an area where nothing at all happened except that you got to look at some scenery. So you might spend an hour trying to get into a room and only three seconds in there, which made me wonder why I had bothered. I think the puzzles could have been integrated into the game better. As it was, the plot seemed almost an afterthought, stuck in to make an adventure out of what was mainly a series of puzzles for puzzles' sake. I took about 30 hours to complete MJ 2 at the rate of 1 or 2 puzzles a night; it was not a game that absorbed or inspired me to keep playing for hours and hours on end. I liked it better than MJ1--it was far better constructed and far more comprehensible. If you like puzzles you'll probably like this game. If you're looking for a complex story and character interaction, probably not so much.
Rating:
Summary: Better than MJ 1 by a long shot
Review: In the opening movie of Mysterious Journey 2, you wake up on a space station. A recorded message informs you that you have been in cryogenic sleep for 200-odd years as punishment for "betraying your planet." Apparently you were involved in some kind of war that, 2 centuries before, all but wiped out the planet (Sarpedon) and everyone on it. Furthermore, the recording informs you, the space station will fall out of orbit in a number of days and waking you up to experience this event is also part of your punishment. But before the recording can tell you anything else, an energy surge destroys it and you are left....alone? MJ 2 is a 1st person game with numerous 3rd person cutscenes as you progress. Let's get the tech out of the way: this game requires a computer no more than a year old or so, with a good video card. The game (on three discs) fully installs to the tune of several gigs of hard drive space. Once installed, is does not need any disc inserted to run--a plus, in my book. As you might expect from the requirements, MJ 2 is graphically stunning. There's lots of subtle animation, from the movement of water, to trees swaying in he breeze, to insects fluttering around lamps: in every location, something is moving. The character rendering is also quite good, although character movement in the cutscenes is a little jerky. The sound, however, is a little weak. Music consists of the same tape loops repeated over and over again, with no variation between locations, and f/x mainly consists of blowing wind and mechanical humming. The voice acting was decent, but in several places the f/x drowns out the dialog. There is no separate volume controls for dialog and f/x, nor are there any subtitles. So there were places where I really couldn't hear what was being said. You can get a dialog transcript from the main menu, but there were inexplicable gaps in that transcript. Fortunately, you didn't really need the dialog to play the game, but I still found it annoying. You can navigate either with the keyboard or the mouse or both. Movement is absolutely unrestricted, which was nice. There were only 3 mouse cursors to worry about: the general navigation cursor, the "activity here" cursor, and the warp cursor, which took you between locations. New locations took several seconds to load, but movement within a location was smooth and fast. Though there is a story behind your actions, essentially MJ2 is a puzzle-heavy game. Puzzles lead to new locations, which lead to more puzzles and so on. I found that most of the puzzles were on the easy to medium-hard side. When I got stuck, it was more likely that I was making the puzzle more complicated than it really was; thinking in simpler terms often led to a solution. Many of the puzzles are math-based, so if you don't have a mathematical mind, you might not like this game. Attention to details of the environment is a must, as is note-taking. There are a few inventory puzzles, but you generally used your inventory immediately, in the location in which you found it. There are no timed puzzles and you can't die, but there are a few places where you can get backed into a corner, so saving before and after each puzzle is essential. There are an unlimited number of save slots available to accomodate this, plus the game auto-saves at each new location. The one thing that really bothered me about this game was that about half the time, completing a puzzle led to an area where nothing at all happened except that you got to look at some scenery. So you might spend an hour trying to get into a room and only three seconds in there, which made me wonder why I had bothered. I think the puzzles could have been integrated into the game better. As it was, the plot seemed almost an afterthought, stuck in to make an adventure out of what was mainly a series of puzzles for puzzles' sake. I took about 30 hours to complete MJ 2 at the rate of 1 or 2 puzzles a night; it was not a game that absorbed or inspired me to keep playing for hours and hours on end. I liked it better than MJ1--it was far better constructed and far more comprehensible. If you like puzzles you'll probably like this game. If you're looking for a complex story and character interaction, probably not so much.
Rating: 
Summary: They Didn't Learn
Review: Regarding the puzzles in this game, apparently, the publisher didn't learn. This is a set of impossibly hard, arbitrary puzzles masquerading as an adventure game. Basically, read the lowest rated reviews here for the earlier game, Schizm, and you'll see what this game is like.
Rating:
Summary: It's a RIPOFF!!!!!!!
Review: This game is a ripoff of the MYST games. From the MYSTerious to just the overall game, you're much better getting the phenomenal MYST games. Honestly, don't spend your money on something that's only a small fraction equal to the beauty of MYST, Riven, Exile (well, MYST and Riven beat Exile...), or Uru.
Rating:
Summary: Immersive, beautiful, and challenging!
Review: This is probably the second best adventure game I've ever played (the best one being Riven). The graphics were incredible, even running low detail on an Athlon XP 1700. I had the bare minimum graphics card (hardware TnL w/64 MB RAM) so some of the more expansive areas rendered VERY slowly, but most of the game ran at a very comfortable frame rate. (If you've got a top-rate video card, this game will give you a visual feast!) The sound effects are also very immersive and are impressively detailed whether you've just got stereo speakers or a full 5.1 surround sound setup. All the technical detail in the world is just so much eye and ear candy if the gameplay isn't up to par, and MJ2 delivers logical puzzle-style gameplay in spades! As others have mentioned, the puzzles are very well integrated into the game, and while there were a few that I looked at and thought, "It wouldn't be set up like this in reality," most were very carefully placed and believably integrated into the game. The difficulty was just right, I think, with a good variety of puzzles including pattern recognition, alternate number systems, and integrational thinking, along with one or two movement-based puzzles made possible by your ability to move freely in real time (a nice addition, in my opinion). The voice acting was generally much better than in Schizm (with one notable exception near the end), but the character animation was a bit stilted (most of the characters moved like they had arthritis). The storyline was very engaging and interesting and helped move you along in the game. Also, it was very rare to find yourself in a place wondering, "What do I do/Where do I go now?" Usually, there was some clue in the last cutscene that would suggest a course of action or someplace that you hadn't gone yet that would provide a new area to explore or a puzzle to solve. The lack of subtitles was more than made up for by the inclusion of a transcript that you could review (without which I'd have had to get a cheat to solve the last puzzle) at any time throughout the game. There were inexplicable gaps in it, but they were not critical. The ending, while not spectacular, was still satisfying (and MUCH better than the one in Schizm!). Overall, I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys good, logical puzzles wrapped up in a gorgeous game. The only caveats I would offer are: 1. make sure your computer exceeds the minimum requirements in most areas (if you can invest in a good video card, DO IT!), and 2. make sure you understand and enjoy working with alternate base numbering systems (e.g. base-2, base-4, etc.). Here's looking forward to more Mysterious Journeys!
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