Mystery of the Nautilus: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

The puzzles are fairly mechanical - not terribly easy - but solvable.
One actually moved outside the box for me - without writng a spoiler - the underwater search had me stumped for ages.

Simply because I never thought of doing it.

undeniably there is pixel hunting - but I personally don't mind that in a slow game. You just have to search really well and make sure you've got everything there is to find.

If you want a slow engrossing game to pass the time - It's not that bad really.
I found it really satisfying when I completed each part.

It's certainly not a quick game - so don't expect to finsh in a couple of sittings.
It's not the most involving game I've ever played - but the graphics and puzzles kept me entertained.

I've played (and finshed) a lot worse.
At least it's not boring.


Annoying, not worth the time   September 14, 2003
HH (Phoenix, AZ)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

There are some good points to this game. They're few and far between, but they're still there. The graphics are good, although dark, and I liked the premise of the game (you can read about the story in the other reviews). From the beginning, I found it intriguing enough to keep going.

By the end, though, I was sick of it and kept referring to a walkthrough in the final stage just so I could finish the game quickly. The entire game involved sweeping the mouse slowly across the screen, every screen, every view, hoping to catch the brief second when the cursor would change and let you know there was something to pick up at that pixel. All puzzles except one were inventory-based, mechanical puzzles, that actually made sense once they were solved. However, solving the puzzles involved nothing more than trying different inventory items at different hot spots, hoping one would work.

The interface is 360 degrees, which was nice because the character could look up and down, left and right. Movement from one place to another was tricky, though, because you had to find the exact spot where the mouse cursor would change to an arrow (often pointing in an illogical direction such as through a barred gate or over a piece of furniture).

My version of the game was buggy, and sometimes the cursor would show an action that wasn't possible. For example, during one of the timed sequences (the underwater one), I spent several precious seconds trying all of my inventory items, one after another, on one piece of machinery because the mouse cursor told me that I should use an inventory item on that spot. (It was wrong.) There were also times I would look at the same spot from a different view and find doors closed that I knew were open or pieces of a puzzle missing that I knew were there. Very annoying, and certainly not what I've come to expect from Dreamcatcher.

I picked up this game used for a couple of dollars so I wasn't as disappointed as I would have been if I had paid full price for it. But my advice would be to skip it and go on to one of the better adventure games out there.


good game,good music   February 9, 2003
joseph patrick branham (louisville, kentucky United States)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

This was not the best game but it was good.The pixel hunting was a little annoying at times because it made it tricky finding objects.I liked how the rooms were damaged after the collision with the squid.I liked how you could find new items after the collision.Some of the rooms i was never in after the collision.I wish i could have gotten in those rooms.I noticed a statue of a white goose in nemo's room on the desk.Even though the goose and several other objects were useless they do add to the graphics of the game.


Beautiful, yet Frustrating   August 18, 2002
wysewomon (Paonia, CO United States)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful

_Mystery of the Nautilus_ is yet another of those irritating adventure games that tries to make up for its lack of true challenge with frustrating pixel hunting, too numerous timed sequences and misleading comments by the main character. In it you play a scientist who, in the opening sequence, goes against orders, leaves the submarine where he is stationed and finds himself on a Nautilus abandoned by captain and crew untold years before. The Nautilus is being run by an Artificial Intelligence device that, unsurprisingly, identifies any human presence as hostile and tries to wipe it out. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to explore the Nautilus and find a way back out while avoiding the traps and snares the AI device hurls your way.

To its credit, MOTN is a beautiful game with rich 360-degree graphics and lots of different areas to explore. Despite the unoriginal premise, many of the puzzles -- strictly inventory-based -- are engaging. But I'm afraid those are the only good words I can say about it. From the very first, contrived difficulties interrupt the flow of what should be an absorbing experience. These difficulties most often take the form of hotspots that are impossible to locate without moving your mouse cursor over every single pixel of your screen. Generally when you have to do this you have no real clue what you're looking for, as you have already exhausted every logical avenue of thought. So the game devolves into random, directionless searching. Some game developers seem to feel that this is an appropriate substitute for true non-linearity, but I don't share this view.

The other contrived difficulty is the nefarious timed sequence. I do not believe in timed sequences in adventure games, where the point is exploration. I can tolerate one or two, if they are well thought out and if the game will reload itself at the right spot when/if you die. MOTN features neither of these things. At least one of the timed sequences is totally unecessary, as completing it sucessfully or not results in the exact same consequence. Another gives you a ridiculously short time to solve a number of puzzles that also involve pixel hunting. Often the only way to solve these sequences is by dying twenty times in a row while trying simply to locate everything you need. To me, this is inexcusable. I believe in an adventure game you should theoretically be able to successfully complete a timed sequence on the first try. Being set up to fail gets discouraging.

This game offers a lot of useless bells and whistles -- things that are obviously meant to be cool features that just get in the way, or turn out to be irrelevant. For example, the protagonist comes equipped with a PDA that records information that you stumble across along the way -- but you never have to refer to it. In fact, as a rule information and documents that you will need later aren't stored at all. The protagonist also makes a big deal about recording his thoughts. But as this generally takes the form of his making some inane and useless or even purposely misleading comment right when you're trying to think,I wished there was a way to turn this feature off.

MOTN suffers from lazy programming. Often, when you effect a change in one area, when you look back from another area the change seems not to have taken place (e.g., cabinets you have opened appear to remain closed, etc). The music is repetitious and annoying. There are too many enforced barriers -- doors that are mysteriously blocked, or even passages standing open that, for no apparent reason, you can no longer access. All in all, it felt very restricted -- perhaps not surprising for a game set in a submarine, but not what I look for in an adventure game.

I completed MOTN in about 15 hours, so it is not a long game. It is not even particularly absorbing; every time I began to get involved there was another timed sequence or pixel hunt to make me wish I was doing something else.

If you want to explore Captain Nemo's Nautilus, read Jules Verne's books, or even rent the movie starring Kirk Douglas. Those were entertaining. Mystery of the Nautilus just made my head hurt.