Jules Verne's Mystery of the Nautilus - (Universal‪)‬ 4+

I love Jules Verne, steam punk, the Nautilus. Captain Nemo is a favourite anti-hero and I wanted this to be a good game but I found it boring. I was expecting something like Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic book not the movie). No such luck.

You get locked in the Nautilus and have to escape. Problem is, I am on the side of Captain Nemo and would like to live on the Nautilus so I don't feel any desire to 'escape'. But I suspect even a non-Nemo fan would fail to feel any sense of urgency. Only the irritating music and pop up messages create any tension. This is not the pleasant tension of fairground thrills and spills enjoyment. It is more like the screaming-pitch irritation of listening to someone scratching blackboards or rubbing balloons. I was so annoyed by the music I turned it off. Pity I couldn't do that with the let-me-spoon-feed-you pop-ups.

So, you wander around trying to escape. Corridors, uninhabited rooms. Dull, very dull. Navigation from place to place is a stomach-churning insensitive swoop and loop which lacks subtlety to say the best about it. The effect on the viewer is like flu crossed with vertigo. Seasick in a stationary submersible, there's a novelty.

The artwork is quite nice but 3D rendition is sketchy. Each scene has very few opportunities for interaction with the environment so you are just clicking on occasional high-lighted arrows and spots. Puzzles are no-brainers. It all adds up to a disappointing absence of any sense of involvement or adventure.

The big banner advert across the top of the screen on the free version doesn't exactly build atmosphere either. How naff!

I recommend the Broken Sword games. They are old, clunky, have flaws but despite all that remain great entertainment.

You know, I just don't get it: the iPad 4 is reviewed as one of the best bits of hardware around today (Feb 2013). I paid for quality. I am happy to pay for top quality software. I want high quality entertainment. It can be done so why is it not being done. If I offer fifty quid a pop will someone, somewhere write some top notch apps for iPad, some fun games? Sure, some people will only spend pennies on games and they get the crap they pay for but is that any reason to penalise people who want quality and will pay for it? There's something deeply wrong with the tablet marketplace if I can't get quality even when willing to pay tens or hundreds of times more than the average price for an iPad game. Economists wanna explain this? Rant ends.

Big thumbs down.

I had hoped for an interesting exciting point and click game. However, the game doesn't invite you to explore and interact with the environment. Instead you can only go where the arrows point and instead of giving you the opportunity to search for objects a hand tells you to pick something up. Actually the graphics in the rooms are so bad that you can't even see objects clearly. The music is extremely irritating and had to be turned off.
I persevered for 20 minutes then gave up due to lack of interest.
I won't be purchasing and have deleted the game.

Nice cut scenes, decent puzzles and long gameplay.