Cheap Temujin: A Supernatural Adventure (Software) (Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows 98) Price

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Customer Reviews of Temujin: A Supernatural Adventure

This first-person game opens with a cutscene from the burial of Genghis Khan - birthname, Temujin - introducing us to the two women from his life who we'll be meeting as ghosts later on: Mei, a shaman whose efforts to protect the Khan's soul were thwarted by Xiao, the priestess of the cult of Wah-jin who sought to bind him so that he would one day return to rule the world, and be ruled in turn by her. Mei's ghost is to be your help/hint system.

Moving to the present day and the beginning of the game, the player is trapped in the Stevenson Museum, which houses the artefacts found in Temujin's tomb. The centerpiece of 'the Capricorn collection' from which it takes its name is the mysterious Wah-jin symbol (the elaborate goat-skull seen on the box art - it's based on a real artefact). Temujin's coffin is also on display, although nobody ever found his body - but it's not empty, as you'll find out if you look inside when a shaken art expert stumbles out of the exhibit area at the beginning of the game.

The museum's actually pretty small, without any visitors on the day the game takes place, but you've got the restoration studio, the break room, the storeroom, the gift shop, and the offices of all the employees to explore as well as the exhibit areas. The owner, Matthew Stevenson, uses his office in the museum to run his Wall Street empire, since he likes having a few artefacts sitting around his office. (Incidentally, all the artwork in the museum really exists, though spread out across many collections in real life.)

The player character, like the player, begins the game with a blank slate, suffering from amnesia and unable to speak. The other characters - mostly museum employees - seem to know who you are and to know what's wrong with you, so an atmosphere of conspiracy builds up fast. (It's good to play the game a second time, in fact, once you know what's behind it all.)

This was the first Southpeak game to use the Video Reality engine, so the setting and all the other characters are played by live actors, so much of what you see is photo-realistic. (In some places, this helps you identify objects in the environment that you're supposed to interact with - one artefact that you're supposed to pick up early in the game looks very unrealistic in its original setting, since it's represented by an artificial graphic that wasn't very well done - but most of the things you interact with are in fact represented by real photographed things.) The downside to this, despite the game's claims to the contrary, is a certain limitation on how much you can interact with the other characters. You can't speak at all - there are plot-driven reasons for this, though - so whenever you meet another character, you go through a cutscene rather than an interaction you could control.

The puzzles you need to solve are a mix of pretty logical actions - swipe some batteries from something else if the tape player you need to listen to has dead batteries, for instance - and a few really contrived puzzles. (For instance, when you need to break off a piece of one item, you don't hit it yourself like a normal person - you're required to ricochet a rock off something else to hit it.) Some of this can be justified in plot terms as the ghosts 'testing' you to see if you're worthy of what they eventually have in mind, but in that case, they're valuing puzzle-solving over common sense. :)

On the whole, I like this game - the story is cool and the museum is beautiful, and while there aren't many surprises on replay, you'll have a new perspective on what the other characters are doing. The standard complaint about the movement system used to be that despite having a map of the museum, there isn't any quick way to 'jump' from point A to point B, but given modern graphic cards' performance that's not really much of a problem; besides, the player needs to search the whole place for clues. Some trigger flashbacks of memory, while others just provide atmosphere and help the player figure out what's going on. The game is somewhat linear, divided into several 'acts' in terms of the goals you need to achieve, but you have a respectable amount of freedom as to how you go about it.

Trivia: Southpeak invented Virtual Jigsaw as a side effect of this game; the puzzles in the museum gift shop can be worked by the player, and each provides a little information about the museum and its contents when completed.

_Dark Side of the Moon_, a later Video Reality-based game, addressed the dialogue issues, if you like the basic look of Temujin but are bothered by the passive role; a comic book you'll find in the later stages of Temujin has an advertisement for its sibling across the back cover. :)

The scenery is the best part
I was sucked into this game by the gorgeous setting; it takes place inside a small, posh art museum where you spend most of your time wandering around and looking at the sumptuous objets d'art collected there. You're looking for clues to a mystery involving relics of Genghis Khan and a modern cult wishing to use those relics for a sinister purpose. Sounds good, but it lost something in the actual execution. First of all, the puzzles are exceedingly contrived. At one point, to progress in the game, you have to brew a cup of tea. Do you do this the normal way? Oh no. You have to rig up this complicated device involving a toilet paper roll, toothpicks, and I can't even remember what else. Why??? I also hated the ending. The "winning" ending is only slightly less depressing than the "losing" ending. I finished the game only to wonder why I'd spent so much time on it.

Great Game!!!
This is game is so cool! If you get into it the game goes by really fast , but there is so much to do, it reminds me of the 7th guest. You get to walk around the muesum sneaking into offices and poking around looking for clues. I love the interaction it felt so real and the timeing was perfect. The puzzles are really fun and sometimes out there and the conversations you overhear and people you bump into are so wierd! It's definally one of those games for rainy nights, a great buy!