Journey to the Center of the Earth was the buggiest I've ever played. I got it when it first came out and had no idea just how many bugs I would find. One the beach, there were some funny things. I was still in the looking around stage when the phone rang - I happened to look back at the screen and Ariane was spinning all by herself! I didn't even have my hand on the mouse! She often spun when you tried to get her to go in a different direction, and sometimes head off on her own in another direction (like back where she had just come from). Also on the beach, a couple of things appeared in my inventory without my clicking on them, just by walking near them.
The game used little feet to tell you where to click for an exit from the area, except sometimes there weren't any little feet, and sometimes there were little feet where she couldn't walk (like across a lab counter). There was a place on the platform where she walked a foot above the platform surface. Also she did this on the bridges.
Spoiler: There is a place where you use a cart to get back from the city to the jungle. When you first used it, you had to feed a baby dinosaur to get it to pedal this cart for you, but the next time - all you did was click it. It seemed like you didn't move, but actually they omitted the cut scene to show the movement, and only the background changed. It gave the impression that nothing happened, but you HAD moved.
But the worst bug was in the lab. There was a place where Ariane could step that she couldn't step out of, in front of the cabinet. The game didn't freeze up, but since you could do nothing, it might as well have frozen up. You had to exit and go back to a saved game.
All this was really too bad - the game was beautiful in graphics, and a decent story, but they couldn't have done any beta testing, or they didn't take the time/money to fix these errors. There were some other issues as well, but those could have been in any adv game: There was a tile puzzle to open a door, but the clues for the tiles, though vague, weren't given till after you got through the door. There was a terrible sound puzzle that had you traipsing back and forth, but bad puzzle design is a frequent problem in adv games.
Spoiler: And there was one place where you needed to use an empty shell, a "living" shell, and mastodon hairs to make a vegetable lens. Now how's that for logic!
FGM-Lyn
