Obduction ®

So this is a really nice puzzle game, at least it would be. But it has three very serious flaws. Nr. 1: The translations. They are, in part, very bad. To the point that i had to swich back to english to understand what they were trying to say. Normally i dont care that much, but this is a puzzle game, clues are hidden and given in text. They should not have used google translate or some non-native speakers to translate (applys to the german version). Nr. 2: There is a quest giver yet no quest log. So if you missed what he told you the first time, forgot or didnt understand it you have nowhere to check what exactly he said. Also, he wont repeat it. Nr. 3: Some hints and clues are in the form of sketches or pictures. They come in an untolerable resolution. This could be a bug, but in effect it makes you google what it was supposed to look like and that spoilers a lot for you. I tried different graphic settings but nothing worked. For example, there ist some kind of newspaper/advertisement laying around that gives you a hint. I couldnt even see the picture let alone read the text. I assumed it was some blurry non-relevant decoration piece. Conclusion: Buy only if you are comfortable playing in english and googling solutions/clues.

Even if it seems intriguing, I would strongly urge you to avoid it at all costs. Note that many of the positive reviews mention that they have played only for a few hours. The game wears you down until it makes you hate it and yourself for spending so much time on it. It is all about opening doors so you don't take so long traveling from place to place. That's the whole game. The puzzles and design decisions are greatly flawed.

The game itself is good, and it does bring back wonderful memories of the past games, such as Myst and Riven, but the loading times are far too long. Booting the game takes 2 minutes, but pressing resume takes approximately 10 minutes! Strangely enough, I found that if I press LOAD rather than RESUME, it only takes 2-3 minutes to load my last save. Inside the game, however, there are more loading issues, such as moving from one zone to the next. These take another 2-3 minutes, and some puzzles require you to regularily jump back and forth. I have an i7 machine, which is capable of loading other games in seconds. I found that even after installing it on an SSD it's still very slow. I'm hoping the developers can do something about this, but at the moment it just looks like they've done a poor job optimizing the game. Beyond that, it's beautiful, with some interesting (with the occasional stupid) puzzles.

Beautiful graphics, decent puzzles that allow you to figure out (except for the maze). Unfortunately, wished there was an option on the menu to save game to a name instead of just one major save. After spending untold hours in these worlds, found myself at the bottom of a pod in netherland or when trying a load instead of resume, just floating. Game is hosed. It has some slow moments (esp in the first tree where you wonder if you are hosed or timing...). However, seems to be quite a few glitches in searching the web. It is apparent my game is toast. My husbands game is so far okay but I dont hold out hope. Its not the money, its the time. Not a student, work a 24 oncall job and finding time to blow on this game was tight. There is no way I am starting at the beginning again. If we're all beta it would be nice to know. If you want to try this game, I'd wait a year to see if they can get it paste glitchville.

The first section of the game is excellent. Felt like the first time I played Myst many years ago. But once you progress past the first area, the game quickly jumps on rails. The puzzles became less interesting and more tedious. Environments became more linear. Bugs started popping up and performance dipped when it had no reason to. It felt like the developers had to rush to finish it and just started cutting corners to do what they could with the time (money?) they had. I will say that the story was well thought out and paced throughout the game, and they did a good job revealing it as the game progressed. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to carry it. Had the entire game been like that first hour or so, it could have been a masterpiece, but sadly if flopped for me.