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AMBER: Journeys Beyond

In AMBER you're investigating ghostly phenomena in a quaint old house in North Carolina. You find a few things, wander around the house, watch a little TV, see a few ghostly images. I like a game that takes me to someplace far away, and North Carolina just isn't far enough. To make things worse, I got stuck early in the game. Some games help you along. You have an item, you have an object you want to use with that item, you put the item on the object and it fits it in for you. But AMBER expects you to put the item on the exact proper spot on the object, and because I didn't know this I wandered around desperately trying to figure out what to do in this pokey little house for a very long time. So I was pretty down on the game pretty early.

My first experience in a ghost world (done in black and white -- each ghost world reflects a different visual style) was also not that satisfying. There were a couple of pretty easy puzzles, then a puzzle I just couldn't solve (which my games-writing friend had no problem with), and then one of those sliding block puzzles that are just plain annoying.

So at this point I haven't had much fun and I'm half-way through the game (this is a short game, containing perhaps 25 puzzles altogether. If I hadn't got stuck near the beginning I could have finished the whole thing in 20 hours). I'm pretty disgruntled. But then I see a body swinging from the rafters and things get a little more interesting.

Because the other two ghost worlds are pretty cool. In one you get to see the afterworld through the eyes of a psycho: click on a bee hive and the bees rise up and start telling you about the aliens. This section is dark and disturbed, and a lot of fun. Then you get to see the world through the eyes of a child that died under the ice, and meet his talking ("pull my finger") doll. Good, twisted fun for the whole family.

The puzzles are pretty good, although only a few are first rate and a few are the type you solve by-accident-on-purpose (that is, you know what you're trying to do, and you're fiddling around with it, and suddenly it just clicks into place and you couldn't do it again except by accident). It's a decent looking game, in a clean, Myst-in-North-Carolina way (it doesn't look as expensive and elaborate and breathtaking as something like Myst, but it's pretty).

If the whole game were as good as half of it, and if it were twice as long, I'd urge you to go out and buy it. But it's not.

-- Charles Herold -1998