Obduction ®

Have been a fan of Cyan since Myst. Liked Uru the best because of the vast exploration. spent months playing it. Loved Revelations for its graphics. Loved Riven and Exile for their stories. Myst, the first one I played for being over and above the best game for its time, out classed anything up to its time. Obduction has the best graphics by far, story is pretty darn good. A lot more running around than the others, but so far has been fine with me. Not really that far into it. I love adventure games the best because of the exploring. Obduction has amazing graphics which is really a plus in the exploring part. Am having troubles with the puzzle parts but it's just me (66 years old and senile?). Will finish it eventually, with excellent adventure games as rare as they are these days, I have plenty of time to spend on it before anything as excellent (or close) comes out.

I didn't realize how much I missed the Myst games until I played this. But this reminds you of what Cyan does so well: the mysterious, empty, yet beautiful and compelling world; the many puzzles just placed there without explanation, tantalizing but stubbornly opaque until you unlock something else: obscure clues that give you a real feeling of victory when you finally connect them together. This is one of the most enjoyable games I've played in a while. There are only three points of criticism: 1) Seriously, no customizable controls? 2) By their nature, many puzzles involve going back and forth across level loads. I wish that had been optimized better. 2) You spend a lot of time walking back and forth across the game world, moving between puzzles, going around obstacles, etc. It gets a bit tedious when you're backtracking instead of exploring. Myst games were like that too of course, but Obduction doesn't have the lightning bolt to move you along more quickly. None of these criticisms were enough to lose it a star, however. Overall a really great game, and I hope Cyan is back in business and starts making more games.

I never was into Myst games mainly since I dislike pre-rendered graphics and my main interest in every kind of game is to roam freely around and explore the landscape. So I wasn't interested in Obduction because of its Myst legacy but because of the promise of a SciFi adventure with interesting locations. All in all, I'm quite happy with the game. The 2D videos/animations for the few occurrences of other people talking to (not with) you bummed me out a bit since this felt like a reminiscence of crappy 90s FMV adventures, but I guess this is slightly better than just audio or ugly 3D characters as presented in other non-AAA titles. The locations/graphics range from OK to gorgeous with nice color design. You can move freely, but most of the times you are limited to walking on given paths (no jumping, swimming, climbing). Loading times are usually quite fast, but "swapping" locations means loading and some of the puzzles later in the game include a lot of swapping, so it can get annoying even though the swapping animation is kinda cool. Most of the puzzles are somewhat logical and the first part of the game is a good mixture of exploration and physical puzzles like starting generators, opening doors, using machinery. Later in the game, the puzzle design changes towards swapping which can get mildly annoying. Besides, there are tons of hints towards more complex puzzles which are totally missing though. Like there is no inventory and no item interaction whatsoever other than using levers, buttons and the like. Admittedly, I got totally stuck at one point towards the end of the game, where I overlooked a hidden exit and got totally frustrated by trying to find a way to the tree in Kaptar since I assumed I had to swap there from another world. I partly blame the game design as some doors suddenly were locked in Maray and the level design hints to undiscovered areas which can't be accessed. Bit short, too. Without getting stuck, I guess it would've taken 10h or so.

I haven't played much of the game yet, however I did notice that keys are not rebindable, something which is truly inexcusable for a pc game.

Had to stop playing and uninstall this game. The "bob and wobble" of the camera kept inducing motion sickness. Changing the "video settings" did nothing.