I owned Rayman back in the days when I had a Sega Saturn. It belonged to my series of favorite side-scrolling adventures. I found the game very entertaining and very beautiful. If you ever played Donkey Kong Country, you can relate Rayman to this game very much - but without the monkeys and bananas. The story is simple: Rayman, although he has arms nor legs, has to restore balance to his world by setting free the encaged Electoons. Each scene of a world holds a number of cages with these funny creatures; sometimes they're in plain sight, sometimes you have to look, and look, and restart the level with new powers and look again. In order to advance to the next level, you need to save a certain number of Electoons. You begin the game with only the ability to jump. But as Rayman meets the fairy Betilla, he gets new powers along the way, such as flying and punching. If adventurous enough, Rayman can even find hidden paths to secret scenes. The graphics are very beautiful compared to the standards back then; and even if they may seem dated now, the humor, beautiful colors, atmospheric music, and bizarre enemies make up for it. I am very curious what this special edition has to offer regarding the new levels. If I would have to name one negative aspect of the game, then it's the save system. You have to complete several scenes before you can save your progress, which can sometimes be very frustrating if you are in a tight spot with no lives for spare. The soundtrack was available on my Saturn disc as a CDDA track, which meant I could just put it in my CD player to listen to it. Yes, it's that good so it's a nice bonus feature that GOG has included here. If you were out to get this game, don't doubt about it: this is a gem right out of Ubisoft's vault.
Dark Fall: The Journal is a first person perspective point and click adventure game, set in a British town in the late 1940s. It is based on a short ghost story of Jonathan Boakes who eventually designed and produced this game himself. You are in search of your missing brother who was investigating paranormal events in an old hotel. At the start of the game you meet the spirit of an 11-year old child, Timothy Pike, who leads you to the train station next to the hotel. Tim's ghost will prove to be a helpful, though cryptic, hint giver throughout the game. Dark Fall combines quite a gripping storyline with eerie music, dito sound effects and carefully designed locations. Gameplay is mainly focused on collecting clues and solve (sometimes complex) puzzles. Ironically, "Dark Fall: The Journal" actually lacks a journal that contains all clues you have collected. This may seem to be a downside at first, but it actually helps the player to become immersed with the game as he is solely responsible for writing down all relevant clues and information. The game may become repetitive at some points as you have to revisit somelocations over and over again but the story is so strong that you will want to finish the game in order to get the answers you're looking for. Probably just once, though, as the game has very little short-term replayability. The graphic detailing sometimes seem outdated in respect to the time the game was produced, but Dark Fall is nevertheless a very decent game. GOG.COM adds a nice bonus by including the game soundtrack. I hope the "hits and solutions" guide will also become available in the future, as it was also present in both the original game release and the special "pins & needles" release of early this year.
The Longest Journey is a point and click adventure game from the end of the nineties. The story starts with an introduction to April Ryan's life. This 18-year-old protagonist is an art student living in a large futuristic city. After wrestling through the seemingly boring but necessary storyline of meeting her friends, visiting her school and realising they're facing with the same adulthood transition problems of present life, the story gets a lote more interesting. Ragnar Tornquist, producer and designer, has shown through this game that he is an excellent storyteller. And although the game is set in the future, you can clearly detect references to today's world. Stark, for instance, devoted to science and technology, could easily be a reference to capitalism, while Arcadia, devoted to magic, is a place that only exists in our dreams and heart's desires. These two worlds, which were once united, are in chaos as the line between the two worlds is growing thin. April soon learns that she can shift between these worlds and that she is prophecised with the difficult task of restoring the Balance between these two worlds before it is too late. The Longest Journey is an original game that has excellent character voices, ambient music, interesting locations and fascinating characters. It's no coincidence that this game made it in the PC Gamer UK's Top 100 games and IGN's top 10 list of point & click adventure games. This GOG.com-game also includes the game soundtrack by Bjørn Arve Lagim and Tor Linløkken, previously available for download via FunCom. Although this game's successor Dreamfall is a much more mature game, you don't want to skip TLJ if you're a real adventure gamer.
