Atlantis 2: Beyond Atlantis

As the reviews suggest this is a love it or hate it game and personally I love it. It has beautiful graphics, good atmoshpere and is completely different which is more than you can say for most games. If you like sitting back and taking in the atmosphere and an interseting and inventive story and puzzle solving then you will love this game too.

I wouldn't usually write a review, but this game is probably the third worst serious game that I own. I could give you about 50 reasons not to play this game, but they all fall under one reason. The main problem with this game is that it just doesn't make any sense; if you play this game you will be confused too many times to count. You start out as a man on a pilgrimage to a weird looking ship. Inside, an old man begins to tell you that you are the bearer of light and that you have to go on a journey and fight the darkness. And while this sounds great and has a lot of potential for epic confrontation, your quest is not really explained until the end of the game, nor do you even meet a real villain until that end. And your confrontation with ... it ... is a real let down. Your real enemies in this game are the incomprehensible puzzles and vague hints as to your purpose in the game -- and the constant stream of odd events that can put your mind off balance. Let's put it this way. Imagine you're talking to your boss about what you have to do that day. Your boss tells you "I'm afraid our earnings are bad this year. If we don't do something soon, we're going to have to declare bankruptcy." "We have to do something." "Yup. You should go to the spirit realm. All our problems would be solved if the Spirits liked us more." Translate that to Ancient cultures, and that's basically the introduction for all three worlds you visit. What you have to do after you get to the spirit realm is anybody's guess. But soon you'll hit your first few puzzles ... which ... don't make sense. Personally, dismembered heads with roots, vague pictures trying to represent mountains with and without rivers, and strange rainbow mazes don't exactly make for enjoyable puzzles. And they get worse. The first puzzle in each world are child's play to some of the absolutely incredibly hard puzzles you will encounter. Unless your IQ is 150+, I absolutely recommend you cheat or don't play to win. I tried this game 5 times before I cheated, I barely got anywhere, and there were entire sections of the game that I had no idea existed. Just do it for your health -- you will live longer, I promise! Despite what I've said, though, some of the visuals are pretty good. The most enjoyable part of this game for me is walking around the Irish Monastery, listening to the music and just taking in the landscape. Just don't expect everything to look amazing. This game looks really good some of the time, and it looks bad some of the time. But if you do manage to see the epileptic horse's tail without cheating, just know that you got farther than I did! So, if you don't mind cheating through a game, Beyond Atlantis is like an acid trip through 3 separate fairy tales. Almost nothing will make real sense, and at the end of it, you'll wonder what happened, and who that blonde person you never met before is!

I just completed this and it didn't take long, very nice graphics but a lot of the puzzles are missing (probably why I got through it so quickly). I feel that I only got half a game. I am assuming this is because it is the mac version. In Ireland you don't get the birdman puzzle, in Maya you don't get to do the number puzzles in the temple, the spider puzzle and the rainbow bridge puzzle in the jungle. In China you don't get to do the disc logic puzzle or the wave and dragon puzzle in the machine room. That is a lot of content cut. Instead you just click on the hotspot and get to continue, shame.

There's few games like the Atlantis games. I have yet to find a game that's got me to love the ambience, the sounds, musics, atmosphere and characters as much as this one has. For the time this game was made in, the graphics are incredible, and I think they still are, albeit slightly outdated. If you've played the first part, you'll be able to understand the ending better, but even without it, the game stand out. Challenging puzzles, difficult brainteasers and very subtle hints make this game quite tough. You must be able to take in every detail in the environment in order to progress in this game, but its beauty definitely had me enchanted, ever since the previous Atlantis game. Several years ago, my parents bought me the Atlantis Trilogy, and still I can't help myself from sometimes reinstalling and playing these games again. For those that are too shallow, this game is most likely not anything for you. You've got to be able to not just play the game, but to become the character in order to love it.