Or maybe not.  This game suffers from the same exact shortcomings as other Dreamcatcher titles of the same genre.  This doesn’t come as much of a shock because the same exact formula is at work here with no hope of redemption.

While onboard a military submarine, your character a scientist detects a massive object on the sonar.  He suspects the large mass is Captain Nemo’s legendary vessel Nautilus.  So the scientist decides to explore his discovery against his Captain’s wishes.  There is no back-story here, and not much detail.  The cinematic is rather short, and doesn’t do much to set the player up with the story.

Once onboard the Nautilus it becomes apparent that the ship is alive.  An artificial intelligence is awakened to the find that our unbeknownst scientist is not Captain Nemo.  So the scientist must die now.  So we must survive while the AI tries to make our player very dead.  Again there isn’t much interaction or feeling of impending doom here. 

Although the concept within the game isn’t that terrible.  Man against machine has a certain amount of potential if it is done right.  Sort of a 2001:Space Odyssey meets The Abyss.  Unfortunately a decent storyline with much promise falls prey to that simple yet devastating of all gameplay descriptions.  The word that comes to mind is boredom.

This game consists of pre-rendered screen shots that actually manage to be quite interesting at times.  The environments appear to be inspired by a 19^th century style of art.  Unfortunately you cannot choose your path and much of the graphical splendor remains in the background.  It is frustrating when something looks kind of cool in the background, but you can’t get close enough to see what the hell it is.

All paths are linear.  Rather the one path is linear.  There are no choices here, but forward or death.  Sometimes it wasn’t even clear why I met death.  You can spin around by positioning the cursor toward the edge of the screen.  The inventory icon is at the bottom of the display.  Sometimes when I dragged an item to deposit into my inventory my player would spin.  To be sure not a big deal, but when it happens over and over again it gets very annoying.  Gameplay consists of dragging the mouse pointer across the screen until you find a hot spot.  The real fun is trying to figure out what to do with an object once you locate it.  A pixel hunt that leads blindly to electrocuted doorways and death.

I hate to sound harsh when reviewing an adventure game, as I am a fan of the genre.  Especially when there are so few out there on the shelves right now.  Mystery Of The Nautilus just fails to capture any sense of action or much of a mystery for that matter.  Uninteresting puzzles, and boring pixel hunting gameplay through an uninspiring storyline makes this title a disappointment.

When there is animation within the environment it is rather weak.  The evil artificial intelligence has a quite pleasant voice although it is supposed to sound threatening.  There is not much to the sound to speak of, and the music seems generic or perhaps fitting to the rest of the games showing. 

If you have played through other Dreamcatcher titles such as The Messenger, or Necronomicon and you enjoyed them, then by all means pick up a copy of The Mystery Of The Nautilus.  It is much of the same thing that we’ve seen in previous games from Dreamcatcher.  Good concept, poor delivery.

Gameplay: 7
A point and click pixel hunt through uninspiring puzzles.

Graphics: 7 
Decent pre-rendered engine, but very poor animations.  At times what you look at becomes uninteresting.

Sound: 7
Music that I suppose is appropriate at certain times, but rather generic.  The title actually does not have very much sound to speak of.  Or not much action, which does not require much sound.

Difficulty: Medium
Some puzzles are made too complicated by a time limit or incessant room hopping which is but a spin and click away.  It just seems unnecessary, and not much fun.

Concept: 8
It sounds like a lot of fun on the outside of the box.  I thought I was in for some mysterious intrigue, but there just isn’t a whole lot you can do for action with this formula that Dreamcatcher keeps using with their adventure games.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 7
This was a disappointment.  I can’t imagine this game being targeted for anything other than the fledgling adventurer.  Veteran gamers probably won’t find much here.  Unless you’ve enjoyed other Dreamcatcher titles and you know what to expect this might be a let down.