I must confess that when I first started playing Return to Mysterious Island, my thought was, “Oh no, another Myst.” I’ve never been a big fan of adventure puzzle-type games, so when I thought I’d loaded another “Mystish” game on my computer, I really thought I’d soon be looking for the “uninstall” button. Thankfully, first impressions are not always right, and in this case they were quite wrong.
On the surface, Return to Mysterious Island is a storyline, puzzle solving adventure game. Where it differs from other such games that I’ve played is that the player is rewarded for creativity and ingenuity as well as puzzle solving. You are following the story of Mina, a young sailor who finds herself stranded on a deserted island. The storyline of the game is inspired by the Jules Verne novel, Mysterious Island. Since I’ve not yet read that novel, I can’t tell you what, if any, specific references to the original novel exist in the game. Well, other than the obvious one of Mina having been a sailor competing for the Jules Verne Trophy. What I can tell you is that the storyline of the game drives you to wanting to play further and find out what happens next. Games such as this are like those wonderful “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that you used to read as a child. And like those books, the game only has so many paths you can take through each chapter to move on to the next, but you aren’t locked into having to figure out exactly how the author wants you to do something. You are working with the author to create your own story, or in this case Mina’s story.
A good example of this comes up early in the game. You soon meet a group of stone throwing monkeys. You can either ignore the monkeys when you first encounter them and move on to do other things, or you can combine items you’ve found to create a slingshot and drive off the monkeys. While you’ll eventually have to get rid of the monkeys in order to advance through the story, how you choose to do so depends on you. I’ve discovered at least three ways of creating a knife, for example, and probably just as many for making fire. There is no single “right” way to do something, and that’s why I’ve found the game so enjoyable.
Mina lands on the island with nothing more than the clothing on her back and a battery drained PDA/cell phone. Your first goal, therefore, is to find food. It doesn’t take long to figure out how to return Mina to full strength, and by the time you’ve done so you’ll find that you are thinking like a sailor on a deserted island. The thing is, the island might not be completely deserted. And that’s where the mystery comes in. Might there be someone on the island who can help you get off? And what’s with all the earth-shakes, anyway? You’ll have to play the game yourself to find out, because I’m not telling.
At first the fact that you are locked into a first-person point of view led me to feeling dizzy and disoriented. I’m simply not used to moving around a game world in such a manner. And it is sometimes frustrating to miss an interactable object on a particular screen over and over again. For example, in one part of the island you have to harvest oysters off the rocks. There were more of them than I could find at first, and they don’t glow or otherwise highlight when you move your mouse over them. So there are times when I took a peek at an online walkthrough to see what I might have missed when I became stuck, but I wasn’t stuck nearly as often as I thought I would be when I first started playing. I think it’s possible that I wouldn’t have missed some of the things I did if I could view the world in third person point of view, but that feeling could be simply due to my desire to play a game that way. The graphics in each scene are highly detailed, and a sight to behold in and of themselves. The times when you do see Mina from a third-person point of view leave you amazed at how real she looks. They’ve done just as good a job on the video cut scenes as they have on the game scenes. The hair on my arms literally stood up when I walked onto the island itself for the first time and Mina looked up to see the mysterious shadow looking down at her. And this is another of those games where I left the sound on. Listening to Mina’s voiceovers helped build the tension as I played, and everyone in the room jumped the first time we heard the monkey screech! We all loved it, though.
Getting Mina’s PDA working so you can use the encyclopedia part of it also will help alleviate much of the “frustration factor” of the game. And sometimes, just randomly combining items to see what you can make works well too. But mostly, if you just use your head and think logically about what you would do in a particular situation, you won’t find yourself wanting to open up the developers’ notes and see just what they were thinking when they created a certain puzzle. That isn’t to say that you won’t have any moments of frustration. I was stuck for quite a while trying to figure out why I couldn’t get the repaired bellows to actually work. But with a little patience, and a bit of online research, I was able to move along through the story. I’d also suggest that if you are someone like me who gets lost easily, make a map as you find new areas. A simple line map has gone a long way toward helping me get around the island, and there are many times when I’ve had to “back track” to a spot where I thought I’d found everything, because the world outside Mina’s immediate surroundings does change.
Keep in mind when you read this next sentence that I really don’t usually like adventure puzzle games. I highly recommend Return to Mysterious Island to anyone who wants to play, rather than read, an adventure novel. It isn’t a game my kids can play, even my oldest (the 9 year old), simply because the puzzles and thought process needed to move through the game are more advanced than he is right now. But someone who is even a couple years older than he is has enjoyed playing it as much as I have, so the game is appropriate for pre-teen children and beyond. If you’ve ever thought of trying an adventure type game, I say start with Return to Mysterious Island and you won’t be disappointed.
I’ve played computer games since college, addicted first to story type games like Might and Magic. I have 3 children who also love computer games. My oldest son is a typical kid who loves the challenge of pressing the right combination of buttons and levers on a joystick in just the right way to make something happens, and frequently gets frustrated with mom’s slow fingers. ;) We use computers for both education and entertainment, and sometimes even bribery for good behavior.
The “glory days” of computer gaming for me were when games like Spectre Supreme, Pirate’s Gold, the Might and Magic series, the original Prince of Persia… those sorts of games were coming out on a regular basis. Back then I owned a Macintosh and was a die hard Mac fan. I was one of the first in my area to buy an iMac and on it learned the joy of playing games on the internet like daily crossword puzzle and “mind bender” type puzzles. My first online RPG was given to me for Christmas the year EQ was released, and I was hooked from day one. I played EQ for about a year. I started playing DaoC during late alpha testing, and was hooked on it.. well, to be honest I still am. I’ve tried pretty much every MMORPG I can get my hands on, from big names like EQ, to more obscure ones such as Underlight. I’ve been writing for IMGS since the first DaoC guide, and find I love the challenge of learning a game and presenting what I’ve learned (and sometimes my opinions), to other players.
I’m not a very strong player as far as learning PvE or quick reaction times, so I tend to stay away from games where I’m pitted against someone else in a way that requires physical (rather than mental) response. I still enjoy story and puzzle games, and in a way that’s how I still approach online games. I would much rather spend hours working through a quest than 5 minutes in combat against another player. I still get lost in simulation type games, obsessing over them until I’ve gotten them beaten. And I like being able to sit down at the computer when I’ve got less than half an hour and playing through a few levels of a puzzle game. I tend not to like first-person shooter type games, or anything with person to person violence, so I steer away from them unless they are fantasy based settings. All in all, I enjoy computer gaming so much that my life feels incomplete somehow when my computer is down.
