Uru: Ages Beyond Myst

Rating:
Summary: ATI Drivers May Need to be Updated - Fun after that
Review: When I first bought this game, I could not get it to run, in spite of the fact that I had the high end of the system requirements listed on the box. I went to ATI.com and downloaded new drivers for free. The game ran beautifully after that.

Things I liked about this game:
1. The graphics. Incredible. I especially loved the 3-D environment that allows you to spin around and look at everything, and gives you more freedom of movement than previous Myst games.

2. The sound. Wonderful, rich sounds that fit perfectly into the game.

3. The story. Apparently, this a matter of taste, as I see most reviewers here on Amazon really disliked the story. Personally, I found the story at least as engrossing as Myst: Riven, although not on the same level as Myst: Exile. I enjoyed learning more about the D'ni people featured in the Myst games. The main story revolves around Yeesha asking you to restore four pillars in order to make things right for a new group of people, called The Least. I found the story very satisfactory.

4. The end. Again, this appears to be a matter of taste. Most people don't seem to have cared for the ending at all, but I loved it. I didn't feel like it was just a prelude for the online game, which I have no intention of playing.

5. The puzzles. They are definitely challenging. If you don't like a challenge, or you don't want to use a good walkthrough to finish, this may not be the game for you. I loved the puzzles (with a few exceptions), and as usual, found them to blend seamlessly into the game.

Things I didn't like:
1. Camera angles. They were pretty good most of the time, but often I would find myself watching my avatar walking somewhere on a path I couldn't see to an area I couldn't see. You can change the camera to first person, but the game will pull you out of it for puzzles, which interrupts the flow of the game.

2. Load times. It takes about a full minute sometimes for a new area to load. Granted, that isn't long, but considering how frequently you have to enter new areas, it can get annoying. This is probably an unavoidable drawback of having such lush graphics in 3-D game.

3. Jump, die, reload. Isn't that what most experienced gamers really hate about some adventure games? To be fair, you don't die, you're simply transported back to a central start point. Which has to load. Then you have to click to go back to the age you were in, and wait for that age to load. Then, depending how far you were from your last save point, you get to go find where you were when you fell. This can get tedious, especially when you factor in load times. One puzzle requires you to do quite a bit of difficult jumping, and I must have had to go through the above sequence 30 times. For that, I knocked a star off my review.

4. You can't save wherever you want. Jumping and falling would not be so frustrating if you didn't have to sit through the constant reloading of areas. You would not have to sit through the constant reloading of areas if you could save right before you jumped in the same area. However, this is not allowed. You never save in this game at all, except by finding and pressing jouney clothes. These save your place in each age. (Puzzles save themselves automatically once completed.) This isn't a huge problem, but can be inconvenient, especially if you're doing a lot of jumping and falling.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game, but there are definitely some flaws.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good But Has Irritations
Review: Overall, this is a pretty good game. Even though Uru presents the world in a fully immersed 3D view (using either 1st person or 3rd person), it's still very much like the rest of the Myst series. Personally, I'm not quite sure if I like the 3D perspective or not: I spent a lot of time switching between 1st and 3rd person (the game's written to work better with 3rd person) and trying to see things around me, but I'm still not sure if I prefer the old Myst "still-life" mode or Uru's 3d perspective. I suppose it's six of one or half a dozen of the other.

Anyway, for the positives, the game is beautifully drawn (though I don't think it's as captivating as the earlier Myst episodes) and has great sound (Note: I've got a 3.0 GHz P4C with an ATI 9800 Pro and SB Audigy 2: all the graphic/sounds settings are turned to their highest). Since everything's static until you do something with it, there's no time pressure and you don't have to worry about dying. For the most part, the puzzles are fun, interesting, and doable. However, near the end, that changes (more later).

Unfortunately, I've got more negatives than positives:

- The game consistently crashed to the desktop every hour or so. There was really no rhyme or reason to it: one moment I'd be doing something in the game, the next, I'd be looking at my Windows desktop. I also had one instance where the game crashed Windows XP and caused a reboot.
- The game doesn't properly explain it's operating procedure. Specifically, it doesn't really explain that there's no SAVE process. In the game's defense, saving isn't really needed. As noted above, you can't die and nothing happens that you don't cause. Also, there are Journey Cloths that you touch that save your position (the game state is always up-to-date). Most of the sub-areas are small enough that coming back to the last Journey Cloth is no problem. The biggest problem is that the first time you leave the game you're really worried that everything will be reset when you come back. Of course, it's not.
- There's a device called a KI which appears to be associated with the Live (online) part of the game (i.e., it's not used at all in the single player version). Unfortunately, it's not well explained at all in the game and a good portion of one world is devoted to finding this KI. Also, when you get it, you're not really sure that you DO have it. It's basically added to your wrist when you use a certain machine. If you're not watching, you'll miss it's addition.
- In each world, there's a subquest for "Yeesha pages." They're added to your "Relto Book" and modify your home base. These are purely cosmetic changes with no value whatsoever. Sort of a worthless process.
- There are a LOT of totally useless, long, boring history books strewn around the game (in one room, there were around 12). Since you assume that everything you find in such a game is useful, you end up wading through them all. Yet, they serve no purpose whatsoever except for fleshing out the background.
- Each world seems to have a jump to a room which serves no purpose whatsoever. You jump there, look around at nothing of value, and then have to find your way back to where you were. Silly.
- When you put your mouse pointer over something important (i.e., you can manipulate it), it changes to a sort of bullseye thing. Unfortunately, it doesn't change unless you're close enough to the point and facing the right direction. You can pass right by important things because you weren't in the right spot when you examined it.
- Very early in the game, it gives you positive re-inforcement that closing doors behind you might be useful. However, later on this same activity can cause you trouble since it will make retracing your steps very troublesome. There's a similar problem with jumping down chasms: sometimes you need to jump down them in the right place (with very little indication that you should). But, most of the time, doing so will end up in your "death" and subsequent return to your home base.
- Several puzzles have NO indication how you are supposed to manipulate them. There are usually clues present that tell you what the answer should be. But, you just don't know how to change the state of the puzzle to get there. VERY frustrating.
- In one case, you push a button to lower a drawbridge and nothing happens. You think you've missed something and end up running around for long periods of time trying to find out what's wrong. It turns out that in this particular case the bridge is stuck. You have to body slam it to get it to drop. VERY irksome.
- Two of the puzzles require you to move objects into certain positions. BUT, you can't pick things up. You have to kick them into position. In the later puzzle, this is EXTRAORDINARILY frustrating because of the hidden nature of the need to position the objects and the degree of precision required. Also, most kickable objects serve no purpose whatsoever.
- One puzzle puts you in a pitch black location where you're supposed to do things. This requires an external light source (which you don't know you can get since you can't carry things). Also, once you get that light source, you're probably not aware that the pitch black area was even USABLE since when you ran across it you couldn't see anything there.
- And, finally, one of the Yeesha pages requires a very sensative set of running/jumping actions to retrieve. This kind of activity has no business being in a Myst game.

Most of the above irritations are pretty minor. The trouble is that the more serious/bothersome ones occur near the end of the game. So, that's what you tend to walk away with. Overall, the game is pretty good. Irritations or not, I still recommend it. One other thing to note: the Live or online portion of the game is not yet available (since I don't play such things, that makes no difference to me one way or the other). So, keep that in mind if you're looking for online play.

Rating:
Summary: This is not an improvement!
Review: The little action figure that you create is irritaing to move. I never did get the hang of it and spent lots of time spinning around and bumping into things. The game itself seems to have a marketing strategy geared toward the online game. I found the problems difficult, actually impossible, to solve. Much frustration here. Lots of side tracks that have nothing to do with solveing the game puzzles which lead to hours of boredom and frustration. Much better to play previous games of Riven and Exile. Even the original Myst has a charm and satisfaction that this game lacks.

Rating:
Summary: fish traps? What happened to this series?
Review: To whomever at Cyan may be concerned or cares:

It took me about three days to beat Riven. It took me exactly 26 hours (minus sleep and food) to beat Myst III: Exile. As soon as my roommate gets done with Myst, I'll beat that too.

I'm not on my fourth day/night of Uru, and I have a few observations for whomever makes product/marketing decisions around there, or whomever wants to read this in general. I don't really care if you read it or not, but it'll make me feel better to write it.

... I just spent over an hour and a half of perfectly good screen time unsuccessfully attempting to correctly place two FISHTRAPS in a river using my feet. WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!? You took a perfectly good idea and completely demolished it.


Here's why your first three titles were fun, and why Uru isn't, imho.

1) They were very binary. Do something wrong, *crickets chirp*. Do something right, *poof! presto chango*. Even when you had to go see if your action had positive consequences or not, it was very clear-cut. Or, as I like to put it, "Repeatable Results." Things work the same way every time.

In Uru, however, depending on how one jumps, leaps, kicks, walks, runs, etc., there are a finitely much greater number of possibilities. And, doing something "more or less" the same may not necessarily return the same results. Or, more simply put, "Marginally Repeatable Results." Attempt the same maneuver 100 times, you might get it right 80 times or so. Those other 20 create a severe amount of frustration in a game with so much complication already built into the objectives.

2) Your first titles had a distinct visual style, which very much led to the first point. While this style may have been the result of a lack of funding, technological difficulties, attempts to make the software package smaller, what have you, it made the games!! This style defined your demographic! No joysticks, no 3D engines, just a slideshow.

Uru, while attempting to catch up to the rest of the electronic gaming universe, completely abandons the low-res charm of the earlier titles. We don't WANT to have to move a character in these games. We WANT the SLIDESHOW!!

3) No freely moving objects. You click a button, you pull a lever, you zip down a ladder with a click of the mouse, and you're there.

Uru: see fish trap rant above. The rocks in Teledahn prison weren't so bad. They were still way more than I wanted, but nowhere NEAR as bad as those fish traps. If you went to so much obvious trouble coding the engine and animating the avatars... couldn't I just pick the stupid thing up and carry it where I needed it? It's not that much of a leap! In fact, unless I'm very much mistaken, it's a heck of a lot easier to code/animate than kicking stuff around.

4) Skip animations. This is HUGE as far as I'm personally concerned. There were so many places you had to go back and forth over the same ground in the first three titles, that when you pushed/pulled/opened, you just wanted to get it over with quickly.

Uru... You know what? I saw that wonderful elevator graphic the first ten times up and down. I'd rather just get back to where I need to reread the map as fast as possible. If there is a skip animation key, I sure couldn't find it. If it's there and I missed it, then I apologize for the rant.

5) Speaking of looking for keyboard shortcuts, I never saw a manual in the first three games.

Why do you all of a sudden put out a game with a manual? WHY!!!! This should be glaring error numero uno in the unbalanced equation that is Uru.

6) This one is more or less all of the above rolled into one. When you put in Myst and fired it up, you were in the game. You didn't have the first clue in heck where you were, what you were doing, or what you might be expected to do. That was so..... refreshing.

The stupid stupid stupid very very stupid Desert. I can completely understand it from with respect to back story, visual excitement, and kicking off things with a puzzle, but:
a- It was huge. I spent way too much time examining fence posts and scrub bushes.
b- I didn't want to have to spend so much time learning how to move my character. See above.
c- What happened to just getting into the thick of things? "Training courses" always have and always will completely suck. Noone wants them except the people who put them in the games. No matter how you spin it, that was a classically cliche training course, complete with help manual Zandi.


Why did you have to kill Uru: Live? Why didn't the subscriber base come calling? As far as I'm concerned, see above. I never would've paid to push fish traps around.

I hope that another Myst title comes out. I really really do. The overriding concept is great. The ball ride at the end of Amateria in Myst III? Awesome. I went back to the top of that building at least 5/6 times to do that over. The plants in Edanna? The first time I figured out how to get into the Idol's mouth on Village Island in Riven? All stupendous. I'm a sci-fi/fantasy buff, love the story, love the characters.

Believe you me, though: I'm reading reviews and watching demos first. If the next one is anything like this - count me out. The only reason I'm going to finish this Age and get to the end of the game is pure stupid stubborness. It won't be out of enjoyment.

Rating:
Summary: Knottyboy
Review: I was a beta tester for URU and URU live. I too was dismayed by the pulling of the live content but suffice to say I don't think we can truly know what was going on behind the scenes at UBI soft. I will say that Cyan cried many tears and made the ultimate sacrifice for URU.

That being said... URU is a new vision of the "ages beyond Myst". They are incredibly intricate and immersive. YES there is a trick to it! But if all you are doing is "TRYING TO BEAT THE GAME" you've lost the whole point of this series of games. Myst and URU are telling of the history of a people, the D'ni, come to earth and the technology they possessed. It is your job to see beyond the tasks of playing to see who they were, what they accomplished and why they disappeared.

Game play takes getting used to, but before long you will be hopping the lava filled chasms and skipping across the rocks to your prize. The music is dreamy and powerful. The sites are astounding and the worlds consuming. If you loved the past of Myst, see the future of URU.

Just released was "To D'ni" expansion pack for all those that have purchased URU. It was in response to the canceling of URU Live. The second expansion pack for URU "Path of the Shell" is already scheduled for release in June of this year. Rand Miller creator of the Myst games told us that URU will live on because of the scale of content that had already been created!

So plunk down your shekels, buy URU and hold on to your hats with each new dose of URU to come.

Shorah

Rating:
Summary: URU - Good game smudged with with poor controls
Review: Other reviewers have noted the awkward controls and I'll have to agree with that. You really do have to routinely switch between 1st and 3rd person views and mix mouse and keyboard controls to play the game. That is, without a doubt, annoying.

That said, after playing the game for several days straight now, the game layout and story line are great, the worlds are fantastic and the puzzles hard (what you look for in a good Cyan game). I've come to terms with the poorly executed first person controls (just about any First Person Shooter game on the market has better controls than this) and am really enjoying the game now.

It's not exactly like Myst but it doesn't pretend to be either. It's very Myst-like in the creation of the visually appealing worlds and the funky mechanical physics that make all the Myst titles fun to look at and experiment with. Lots of the familiar lever/button/switch/pressure plate type interaction for the puzzles that'll keep you thinking for days on end (unless you cheat and go for a walk through).

Short story - great game that's marred a bit by poor controls. Definitely worth a pick up in my book, however.

Rating:
Summary: Worst Myst Yet
Review: I've loved the other Myst titles (Riven is my favorite) and this is a big disappointment.

First the good... This game has excellent graphics and they have thought up some very interesting new worlds.

The good and the bad... The new interface lets you create an avatar for your character. You can change its appearance in many different ways. That's cool! However, the interface is awkward and you constantly switch back and forth between 1st and 3rd person point of view. Looking around for things (which you do a lot of) is more difficult. I liked the Exile interface the best.

Now that bad...

1) Its boring! The biggest challenge in each age is wandering around looking for things hidden there. I'm sorry, but what's the fun in that? You spend all your time looking behind every rock and every tree. This is not interesting, it's just tedious.

2) Like in the previous Myst games, the cursor changes to a hot spot when it passes over something of interest in the Myst environment. However, in Uru, you have to be standing in exactly the right spot before the cursor will change to a hot spot. As a result, it is easy to miss something that can be manipulated because you might be standing just slightly off center. Therefore, you spend a lot of time walking up to things, trying them. Moving slightly to the left, try it again, move back, try, move forward, try, move right, try, and maybe something will happen.

3) It's a teaser! There ain't much in this game. It contains only a single CD, compared to 4 or more in the previous games. What they really want you to do is become interested in Uru Live and pay a subscription fee to play more on line. For $40 - $50 bucks, I would expect a more complete universe.

I would not recommend this game.

Rating:
Summary: Expansion pack just released! Good time to buy this game...
Review: Uru:Ages Beyond Myst was meant to be the stand-alone component of a much larger online, multi-player experience (Uru: Live). Cyan has been working their collective posteriors off for the past seven years designing the world of Uru and much of its (what WOULD have been) continuously expanding content.

The bad news: UbiSoft pulled the plug on Uru: Live before it even officially began. Well... to be fair, Rand Miller of Cyan (better known as Atrus, himself) stated that Uru: Live was being "put to bed"... Implication: It COULD wake up someday.)

Why was the plug pulled? Lots of reasons... not enough subscribers during the free open beta period mostly. Bottom line: Uru: Live needed a lot of dollars to keep itself running from month to month. The people in charge didn't believe the dollars were going to be there.

The good news: Cyan and UbiSoft have just now released (as of March 23rd) the first expansion pack for Uru ("To D'Ni") which contains a fair amount of the content that was originally intended for Uru: Live. And it's FREE for download on Gigex.

Sure, you'll miss the oppotunity to go online and play a Myst game live with other people around the world and be part of one of the most fascinating online communities I've ever experienced... At least... for NOW... (Hope, hope, hope...)

But, at least you'll be able to experience some of the new worlds and expanded story that Cyan created just for Uru: Live.

Buy Uru: Ages Beyond Myst... Play it, solve it, experience it.

Then download the expansion pack and solve new puzzles, explore new locations, and reveal even more of the continuing story of Uru!

Almost like two games in one. (And keep an eye out for expansion pack number 2 in a few months!)

Rating:
Summary: ugh
Review: I have had the game for three weeks now, and I still can't get it to work! My computer specs meet all of the recommended requirements and I even downloaded the patch! I love the Myst series, but this is too much work just to play a video game.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: After reading some of the reviews, one thing is very obvious... people are totally missing the point of this game.

Uru is an amazing story, one that you get to learn as you explore an even more amazing world. The point is not to "win" or "beat the game" - it's to find out more about the D'ni people, and most importantly - where they went. ( Maybe, that's why there are so many notebooks laying around?? Just maybe? ) I played Myst (though never played Riven nor Exile )and I found Uru far more user-friendly then the first Myst released.

I personally, LOVE this game - and am biting my nails just waiting for the next expansion. It truly is a story to live - one that will keep you guessing around every corner.

Yes, you have to use your noggin, but again - that's the point. This is not an "I win" game - it's an evolving world that you get to play a part in. A world done beautifully and one that you will find yourself happily lost in for days.

Two thumbs up, in my opinion.