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Crystal Key 2
This game wastes no time in getting into the action. A portal opens, a woman tries to speak to you and is grabbed
back into the portal leaving a diary. Our hero, Call, reading her diary finds out that the zombie-type sickness
that is pervading his world has also struck other worlds. Looking for a solution he pursues her through the portal.
Call's adventure will take him to various outposts to find a race of called Merari who hold the secret to,
and perhaps the solution to halt this destruction.
In Meribah he interacts with different people to get information, plays a couple of games, checks out the market stalls
and finally gets a jetpack to travel further out into the desert.
There are many puzzles to solve -- more ecological than mechanical, before he reaches the conclusion of his quest.
The final scenes with the Merari are some of the most beautiful I have seen. Does he save the worlds and find the girl -- of course.
Reviewed by: Editor - 06/05
From the title of the game, I can only assume that there was an original Crystal
Key. However, since I have never played it, I cannot make any comparisons to the
original game.
When this game started up, I assumed it would be a Myst hack; run around the
areas searching for clues that will ultimately lead you to a final puzzle that will determine
the fate of whatever world you're playing in. And I wasn't far off the target. However,
this game has something more then Myst had; the world has more vividness and
color, there are actually people to talk to, and there is actually a plot. It also doesn't have
the tension that the original Myst had. While you felt compelled to finish your
quest, there wasn't the same sense of urgency. What I did like about the change was that
there wasn't that eerie quiet the pervaded Myst.
When you first start out the game, you are in an abandoned city. You find a portal that
lead to "mysterious places", and the girl that pops out of it warns you of danger before
being dragged off by strange aliens.
One of the things I didn't like about this game were the graphics for the people. The first
man you interact with looks more like a garden gnome then a person, and the other
people you meet look very fake and rigid. However, the backgrounds were amazing. I
almost gasped out loud when I first saw them. There is a kind of unearthly beauty in these
kinds of fantasy lands, and this game carried off the ethereal quality a lot better then
some I have seem.
Like Myst, this game is a single-player game. There is no option for two players,
and even if there was one, there would be no point, since there is only one main
character. I would say this game is for everyone, although younger children might have a
bit of trouble with the logic aspect of the game. It's a game of mostly puzzles, and small
children are, sadly, not very good at those.
I did not find any bugs within the game, which is a good sign. Bugs often make or break
a game, and this one had none as far as I could tell. I feel that the developers would have
done better with the basic plot, but as a whole I found this game entertaining. I would rate
it a 7 out of 10. But, at the end of the day, this game was much too like Myst for
my liking.
Reviewed by: Vivian B. - 06/05
Ages: Everyone
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