Obduction ®

Obduction is a beautiful experience that is marred by game breaking bugs. I was enjoying this fascinating world until the cart got stuck and I had to start a new game, where the cart got stuck again (this time at the very start, in the elevator!). I do not recommend this game because of this game-breaking bug. The worst thing about bugs in puzzle games is you may initially think the bug is just part of the puzzle - making it extra hard... nope, you just wasted hours on an unsolveable puzzle that is simply bugged. This completely sapped by confidence in the game, knowing that there may be other bugs in the game that would prevent further progression later. Search for "obduction cart stuck" - you will get a lot of results. Really disappointing that the developer didn't fix such an easy reproducable, progress-halting bug. The reason I am giving 3/5 is the game is beautiful and I enjoyed it up until I got very disheartened by the unfixable cart bug.

It doesn't have the magic of prior Myst titles. One of the biggest problems is the writing, it's bad. It focuses around a conflict-related plot that didn't need to happen. They could have instead gone with a plot based around the four races presented by the game using too much power, which has damaged the structure of the artificial reality they found themselves in, and then having to go into suspended animation to reserve what they have left. With a handful of 'remainers' sticking around to fix up the place. With the ending being that all the races get to go home, though some choose to stay and try to repair all the harm they caused. A meaningful choice for the player then might have been whether they want to stay or go. It would be a lot of work to repair all of the damage, but they'd prefer to stay in this incredible place surrounded by wonder rather than returning home. Or they're homesick, and tired, and they just want it all to be done with. And they'd have company, since some people were even born there and they'd want to stay, too. Instead, no, it was all about evil aliens. The ending was about the goody two-shoes getting to go home to dullsville, away from all that terrible alien stuff, back to terra firma familiar. It felt xenophobic and a little unsettling, and completely out of place in a Cyan game. On top of that? The characters in the game are flat, rather than round, which is to say they're all one-dimensional and presented in very black & white tones. They only really exist to info-dump. The humans are all always goody two-shoes that want to do right by everyone, with no variance. No one's greedy, or selfish, or shows any actual human traits to speak of. Compare this to the intrigue and more grey tones of the DRC in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and you'll see what I mean. The next issue is the locations. Instead of focusing on bizarre, atmospheric, strange, magical places steeped with unknown history and filled with alien technology, with peculiar animal life pitter-pattering about? You know, the sorts of things that made Myst famous? The first area you find yourself in, the only area that's actually got any size to it? Well... It's New Vegas. The aesthetic of the first age (and it is the only area with any size to it) is that of New Vegas. It's a junk world in a desert... And while some aspects of it are executed better, I feel that the commonness of the concept did it no favours. I feel that this focus on humanity and an overly familiar junkworld setting was a cowardly appeal to a soporific mainstream. That doesn't work though, and they've ended up pulling a Sunset Overdrive. A game which is still too fantastic for the mainstream, but not remotely fantastic enough for their fans. The alien ages, by comparison, are so small they feel almost vestigial. They're just barren, with no alien animal life to speak of (compared to the vibrant alien animal life in every age of Uru). There's also very little trace of what kind of life the sapient aliens there lived. And that's a real crime because the alien races who inhabited these worlds sounded so wondrous in concept, I'd have loved to learn more about them, their home world, and their ecology. And if it were written better, I would have. If it were written better, there could have been fun politicking between the races about power usage; Who's using the most, and who's not being transparent enough about what they are using. We could have learned more about the alien races and how they think that way, as they all struggle to survive. But no, it's about fightin' them aliens and winnin' them wars! How utterly banal and... just disappointing. And that's what Obduction is. It's a disappointment. It's not a bad game by any means, but it's an uninspired, boring game that feels half-baked. I'd never have expected that from Cyan. You give me brilliantly alien races and then next to no chance to learn about them! The little focus that even occurred within this game (with its profound lack of depth always showing) was spent on the humans. Whoop-de-doo. I have other games that focus on humans, Cyan. I play your games to experience something truly alien. And it's in this way in particular that Obduction is such a total let down. Conclusion: This was a game someone else could have made. Not a bad game, but certainly not a Cyan game. And a Cyan game is what I bought it for.

I bought this game expecting more URU. Graphics are fantastic, gameplay a little daunting, but if you keep notes, it is playable. I found the plot a little weak though. What I didn't like about this game was that the ending was completely predictable. The game did not offer any alternative endings.

Overall I liked the game and I recommend you to go ahead and give it a go! The setting is very intriguing and puzzles are mostly fun. Unlike other adventure games, Obduction lets you experiment with solutions a little bit. The initial confusion and slow exploration of the unusually quiet world was definitely the highlight of the game for me. Sadly, by the time I have started to feel at home, the game has gotten a little bit tedious. There is a lot of walking and not that much of a story. But worst of all, most of the later puzzles are solved with a multiple level transitions that take a considerable amount of time. So... definitely good, but not as much as Life is Strange.

I have been playing the game since 14 September. The graphics are great and the size of the levels is awesome. Some of the clues to a few of the puzzles are very vague and obscure which is interesting and frustrating at the same time. I have one very big criticism and that is the movement controls are really bad which has been spoiling my enjoyment of the game. The left and right cursor keys are very sluggish so turning left or right takes forever. the forward and back cursor keys work fine. The A, D, S and W keys are slow to respond when moving a certain item. The mouse is over sensitive. I have its' cursor in lock mode yet I still battle to yet to get the cursor to stand still when it rests on clickable items. I am having to use the mouse for my left and right movement which in itself is a big challenge. i have tried setting the mouse sensitivity but it has no effect on the clicking issue and makes movent very sluggish. Setting my graphics to the lowest makes no difference whatsoever. All this makes placing the game rather taxing but I am persevering. I hope Cyan does something about the free movement controls. Other than this issue the game is very enjoyable. I have had a few freezes when taking screenshots and one crash. My PC details are: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit Intel i5-330 300Ghz quad core cpu 32GB memory NVidia GeForce GT630 graphics card with 2GB onboard memory 2x 2TB hard drives 1 x 1TB hard drive