User Rating: 6.7 | Uru: Ages Beyond Myst PC
URU – The Californian sequel to Myst. I am a big fan of adventure games. I do not play anything but adventure games. The original Myst ruled. The Riven was a little bit off but still amazing. When I played Myst3 (by that time the Myst brand was purchased by Ubisoft) I got frustrated because a lot of puzzles in certain worlds did not make sense. I still liked Myst3 because it followed the original Myst that was very successful because of its unique idea and the perfect execution: the puzzles were logical, the graphics was perfect, the sound effects were stunning. When I first learned the Myst4 will be online I said to myself: “The game is in trouble”. I understand everybody wants to make profit especially of the good brand but please give me a break. I am supposed to solve puzzles via the Internet with other folks? All right, let’s get over that. It has got to be a standalone version that I can play by myself. And I got that. I bought it in the local Fry’s for $30. The ages beyond Myst. Played all the way till the end in 3 days. It was the worst Myst sequel. Ubisoft killed it. Why? 1. I do not care how my avatar looks like. I do not want or need to have a closet where I can change the pans or the t-short. 2. The main character does not jump, or die, it does not face the skulls or skeletons all over the worlds. 3. The Myst worlds do not have silly post cards with the zip codes from San Diego. They do not also have the notebooks bought in the local OfficeMax with stories about kings that lived 350 years ago. 4. The Myst worlds look unreal. When you play the original Myst you get a feeling this is not happening in the real world. This is somewhere else. Not on Earth. Myst4 starts in Arizona. Eder Kemo world looks exactly like Arizona as well, with no geysers. Eder Gira world looks like California Carmel or Monterey. Who went to Carmel once knows what I mean. Kadish Tolesa world – yahoo! Californian Red Woods. National park. A few things in Myst4 that drove me complete nuts are 1. It is almost impossible to play without seeing yourself. The objects are invisible, you cannot reach a lot of things, you should be really close to touch something, when you hit a button or press something you do not see the result. When you switch to the mode when see yourself from a distance, the camera changes the angle too often giving you a headache. Still impossible to activate objects without coming to them really close. 2. I understand that it is quite complicated to come up with really good puzzles. But it does not mean Ubisoft needs to replace puzzles with challenging jumps. You need to jump all the time. You must jump. You cannot walk through without jumping. If I wanted to train myself for the next Olympics in jumping I would have bought the Prince of Persia or Microsoft Golf or whatever. I bought Myst4 because of the puzzles. Because of the worlds. Because the Myst worlds look fancy. 3. The plot was really weak. The game play was pathetic in some worlds. In the Gahreesen worlds I could not get downstairs. The avatar just does not go there. Or it goes downstairs and if in the middle of the movement you release the arrow key and press it again the avatar immediately starts going up. In the Teledahn world, in the prison cell I had skulls and stones hanging in the air. When you run and jump it is possible to hit them with the head – this will make them go on the ground… 4. On my Sony VAIO box with 1 Gig of memory and 64 Megs of video RAM on 2.8 P4 CPU the games used to freeze for 15 seconds all the time. You get a feeling it is dead, but if you wait longer it awakes… I downloaded the latest patches – did not help. In overall, I must give a credit to all the designers who did an amazing job by painting the worlds. The views are stunning. The sound was excellent also. Very professional. I still feel very sad because the plot and the entire game play did not make it.
