Like most other adaptations of Jules Verne's books, Journey to the Center of the Earth doesn't go beyond the synopsis. Luckily the dart throws landed on some interesting concepts, which although don't fit together, would have made for an enjoyable budget title game. Sadly, the technical side is so badly put together, that I doubt anyone would want to complete this game, even with a walkthrough in hand. It seems you're a photographer who crashlands on a mysterious island housing overgrown plants, giants, dinosaurs, mammoths, and a century old technology stretched to its limits, yet somehow more advanced than ours. Exploring this world, you come across some nice wallpaper quality screens, which make for lousy level layouts, but they make you want to explore as much as possible. Sadly, the game is plagued with every point & click problem ever imagined, making this game almost the cliched old point & click game. Early on you'll discover that although the scenery is pretty, mainly due to the artsy angles chosen to display everything, it makes some areas of the level appear hidden, or unreachable. From the very start you'll get stuck not realizing that there's an entire section of the level you can explore. Coming across the first puzzles, you'll discover that everything you need to collect either looks like part of the scenery, or is so incredibly small, that it takes a magnifying glass to even spot it. Unfortunately, in order to maintain the artsy feel of the game, a lot of screens are empty, and only serve as transitions between points of interest. Meaning that if you get stuck and start frantically moving from screen to screen, you'll have more screens than usual to do that in. Hotspots are also incredibly small, so much so that putting the cursor on an item you can interact with and clicking on it won't always work - you need to place the cursor at just the right place. But my biggest gripe is the rigid path selection - you need to constantly herd your character.
