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Keyboard/Mouse, Adventure/RPG | |
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November 2003 |
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First and Third Person (can be toggled back and forth during gameplay) "Uru’s story is locked in deep with the multifaceted culture of the D’ni people. Unlike the original Myst trilogy, Uru takes place in the present...You will visit eight major areas throughout Uru, which include the Cleft, six brand new Ages previously closed off to explorers, and restricted areas of the main D’ni city. "Controls in Uru come in a combination of keyboard and mouse driven commands, which for point and click enthusiasts, might be a turn off. The mouse is used primarily to locate and activate hotspots on the screen and to rotate the camera angle. My one complaint with hotspots in the game is that when your avatar needs to interact with a machine in her environment, the hotspot doesn’t become apparent until you are almost on top of it. "The keyboard controls are very sensitive, so your avatar can easily run in doughnuts around the screen if you let her/him. This can also become a problem when you’re trying to cross narrow bridges and walk close to the edge of cliffs. You can fall, and fall far. "Puzzles vary widely in type, from the basic learn how to turn on a machine, to the run as fast as you can in twenty seconds to get all parts of a machine to work. "Uru is neither a pure adventure, nor a pure RPG in the sense of Final Fantasy or Warcraft. It is an astonishing synthesis of the two, taking the story and puzzle elements of the adventure and the graphic flexibility of the RPG. From Review #2 "Let me start off by saying that I did not like this game. I mean, I REALLY did not like this game. "Uru requires you to leap clefts and jump onto moving platforms. There are timed puzzles and many opportunities to 'die' if you miss. All the things Myst never made you do. All the things I hate in a game. "There is no question that the graphics are gorgeous...My only complaint is that the graphics end up being the center of focus for Uru. Instead of using the graphics to highlight the puzzles as Myst did, the puzzles are used as an excuse to lead you to more graphics. "[T]here are four different ways to navigate though the game; from first person or third person perspective and with the mouse or the keyboard. And you must use all four if you hope to finish the game...I played the game the whole way through three or four times, but never became comfortable with any of the navigation systems. "[T]here is no way to save a game. You’ve painstakingly worked your way across the Age leaping and jumping from critical spot to critical spot. You make a critical jump, but miss and fall into the abyss. But you don’t die, you automatically link back to home base. This means that you must wait a minute or two (not seconds, minutes) while your personal world, Relto, is loaded into memory. Then you can walk over to your bookshelf, select it, select the Age book and link back to the Age you came from. Minutes pass again while it loads back in. Now you can work your way back across the Age to try your critical jump again. "[Y]ou must move objects around in the game, but you can’t use your hands. If you walk into something small, you will kick it in front of you like a soccer football. Remember that navigation system? Try herding a rock onto a pressure plate...In Uru it becomes a major project. "Puzzles are a mixed bag. About a third of them are wonderful and truly follow the tradition of Myst and Exile. Another third are more of the type you would expect to find in Riven. The remaining third are physical puzzles of the type you would never find in Myst. "About the second time you hit one of those playability issues, you will be asking yourself “Why did the developers use an engine which is so inappropriate for adventure gaming?” The answer is that Uru is nothing more than a teaser to get you interested in the on-line game."
- Editor's Note: URU Live was canceled in February 2004 the first time around. For a look at its demise through the eyes of a player, see Laura MacDonald's Musings on a World Gone. But wait! URU Live (officially, Myst Online: URU Live) was resurrected by Cyan in February 2007 and now resides on GameTap. |
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