One of those rare unambitious little games crafted with loving hands and a great attention to detail.

User Rating: 8.5 | Return to Mysterious Island PC
Return to Mysterious Island is a little adventure which wouldn't offer a compelling and exciting story, but would charm you with its addictive game-play and lovely extra features. It's one of those rare unambitious little games crafted with loving hands and a great attention to detail that provides us with relaxing atmosphere, good quality gaming and desire to play it over once we watched the credits roll. A new creation of The Adventure Company is a small shine in a steady stream of its poor adventure releases, although, like its siblings, it has several stability issues. It might occasionally stall or crash, run slowly with hardware rendering or even lock up. If you experience such problems select software rendering option and set higher refresh rate of your monitor. As it was mentioned above, Mysterious Island is not about an exciting storytelling. It might seem a bit simple and naive, but it keeps a touch of innocence and good air about it. You play Mina - an adventurer, Jules Verne fan and a photojournalist - who finds herself on a shore after surviving a terrible storm. Right from the start the game tries to put you within the limits of a real world. It offers you tasks on survival and gives some basic lessons on how to stay alive on a deserted island. Already in the beginning developers throw you a mystery - a shadow of a man high on a cliff. That gives you enough motivation to proceed further and complete your tasks. And the first one will be to feed oneself with any food one can find, crash, smash, drink or fry. Therefore, most puzzles are inventory-based and you'll be provided with the means to do numerous combinations with zillions of goodies lying all around and waiting to be picked up. Some objects might be used for several purposes and even combined with other items. That possibility adds a note of creativity and excitement to the game. Later on, you'll find yourself an assistant - a monkey. Your pet wouldn't make the game more interesting but will be a very helpful hand in your countless quests. All puzzles are there with the reason. If you need to start a mill, for example, then you'll most certainly be using it more than once. Many puzzles are optional and have several ways to solve them, giving you extra bonus points or even opening an extra story line. This feature gives a non-linear feel to the game and no doubt you'll miss a lot while playing the game for the first time. Apart from inventory scramble you'll encounter several puzzles during the later stages of the game, although after the stunning diversity of item-crafting they are narrowed down to disappointing code breaking, childish mini-games and a trivia quiz, which are quite simple even if you've never played a quest before. I wouldn't suggest using a walk through for this game. Even if you're stuck after some time you'll find an inspiration to overcome an obstacle albeit you wouldn' t find many on your way to discovering the very few mysteries of this unique, but small volcanic island for the game also houses a built-in extensive hint system. Despite its attractive game-play features, Mysterious Island gives away minor logical lapses. They wouldn't annoy, but rather amuse you. For example, Mina's mobile phone oddly survived the water or you'll find a lonely maple amidst lavishly green tropical palm trees. Many puzzles were simplified and you can't hide an ironic smile while watching some cut scenes. Graphics is not a big word in Mysterious Island. You'll be offered pleasing backgrounds and neatly detailed surroundings with 360 degree orientation in scrolling locations. In other words, it provides you with the sufficient means for playing, but it's not the issue for marvel. Most of cut scenes are made as comic-book drawings with some comment of the main character. This is a really nice feature, which adds extra coziness to the game. Musical score and sounds are pleasant and non-disturbing, but nothing in particular either. Despite some minor shortcomings developers created an excellent playground sharing all their dedication and positive attitude. Mysterious Island employs average audio and video presentation values. It has a weak storyline which basically amounts to - Let's save Mina. But this game would attract all adventure fans as well as the rest of the gaming community as a nice change from recent hard-core releases.