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Adventure Game of the Year

The Longest Journey
Publisher: Empire Interactive
Developer: Funcom
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"The Longest Journey is one of the best adventure games in years." - Ron Dulin, GameSpot Review

The Longest Journey is the rare sort of game that you could present to someone who's never played a game before or who has never been interested in doing so - and you'd use it to show that person what he or she's been missing out on.

For one thing, this "he or she" is certainly part of the game's appeal; unlike most games, which are still predominantly made and marketed for an exclusively male audience, The Longest Journey is suitable for both male and female players. The main character, April Ryan, is a believable and interesting character who's easy to relate to, because she's smart and eloquent and funny. But she's also got some problems, and apparently a destiny, and that's what The Longest Journey is about. The original story is one of the best things about the game.

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The game takes place in two parallel worlds, which comes as a big surprise to April when she suddenly finds herself apparently trapped in the one she doesn't recognize. Both worlds have a distinct culture and a huge cast of interesting characters. You'll really get the sense that you can explore these places and learn a lot about them and how they differ. This is partly due to the impressive, realistic graphics in the game: The prerendered backgrounds and the fluidly animated 3D characters make the game seem cinematic and lifelike. The high quality of the voice acting, as well as the game's effective ambient music, make the production quality in The Longest Journey extremely good.

The puzzles in the game are also excellent, and they make The Longest Journey such a great example of its genre. The game is filled with puzzles of all sorts. Some involve dialogue, many involve using items in your inventory in inventive ways, and still others require you to manipulate objects in the environment. Since April encounters some decidedly foreign places, characters, and situations, these puzzles generally seem very appropriate in the context of the game; they are as bewildering to April as they are to you. Yet the solutions to these puzzles are generally logical, and hints are scattered throughout the game. Furthermore, as in other LucasArts adventures, you cannot die in The Longest Journey. This keeps the gameplay from getting frustrating, and yet miraculously, the game still manages to evoke tension, danger, and suspense at several key instances.

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Altogether it's a superlative adventure-gaming experience, and it goes to show that the adventure genre is still going strong. While it's true that there have been many more games in some other genres this year, very few genres have seen a game as good as The Longest Journey. The game was available throughout Europe earlier this year, and thanks to positive online and word-of-mouth reviews, Funcom finally published it in the United States this winter. The European version of the game already had such well-written dialogue and well-acted speech that they didn't need to be modified for the American version of the game.
 
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