Posted on: July 6, 2019

Durandal2

Games: 36 Reviews: 12

It's....about what I expected

This comes pretty close to scratching my Riven itch, which shouldn't be a surprise considering who made it. The puzzles here are... fine. I think the difficulty is just right. They are all incorporated in a diagenic way into this game world which helps make the story at least somewhat believable. However, as a result of them needing to be narratively incorporated into the game world, a lot of them end up feeling kind of the same. A majority of the puzzles are based on teleportation (the game's main gimmick) and its combination with rotating rooms, rotating pathways, etc. In general they all seem to fall into the same realm of spacial awareness and reasoning, as well as needing to thoroughly explore the world to find clues. I personally would have liked to see more variety with logic, math, language puzzles, etc. One aspect of the design I appreciated was how the scope of the exploration was carefully limited. Rarely are you faced with a dozen new paths and puzzles to explore. Rather, the game does a pretty good job of limiting the branches that are made available to you at once - solving one puzzle might open up 3 new routes, one of which is a dead end with a clue, one is a path looping backwards, and the last is a new puzzle. This design makes it easy to keep a mental checklist of where you should be going next. I'm happy to see that there are lots of different options for interactivity (traditional point and click, VR, etc.) though I didn't really find they added to the experience a whole lot. There is a lot of backtracking to the game and lots of times where you are just walking from one side of the world to the other. My other main gripe is the load times, which happen on each teleport. Game developers: I know my machine has enough memory. Can't you just... keep both areas loaded at once? Because some of these puzzles involve teleporting back and forth 10+ times, and it is much more frustrating to do when there's a 20 second loading screen each time.

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Posted on: July 11, 2022

KoncertMajstor

Verified owner

Games: 181 Reviews: 38

A big disappointment as Myst fan

As someone who fondly remembers grinding through Myst as a kid -- writing down information tidbits, creating maps, etc (as there was no internet/walkthroughs to lookup), and then Riven, I was extremely happy to see Cyan coming back to make Obduction in that older style. I wanted that nostalgic feeling of being alone in a "safe" empty world and free to explore and unravel the mysteries. I'll just be direct, this game is quite bad... and it disappointms me greatly to say that. The Good: There are derelict worlds for you to explore, and the game includes the janky live action recordings of people talking to you -- a nice touch. The environments are scattered with strange things for you to consider. The game generally looks nice. The Bad: The performance of the game is absolutely awful. You will notice the loading times when you jump between worlds. The carts you have to ride around in the Myst games is generally tedious and frustrating, and this game relies heavily on a cart. Moreover, the cart's controls, are frustrating and slow... the game in general feels slow to navigate. Sometimes you know what you have to do, but you have to waste a ton of time just walking around. What about the puzzles? There are too few of interest that require critical thinking, and too many that are simply "connect the pipe, and hit the switch". Unlocking curious baubles and thinking outside the box to open ancient sealed doors is what makes myst great, but there's not much of it here. Conclusion: The game is slow and frustrating to play through -- not because it's too obtuse to solve the puzzles, but because of the performance/controls, and planning of the overall world. I didn't get any "WOW" or "AHA" moments like I did from Myst/Riven. Other people really like the game, so maybe I just wasn't in the mindset for it to click, but I'd recommend you skip this and just play Myst or Riven if you haven't already. Or try the Witness, Talos Principle, Baba is You, Stephen's Sausage Rolls...

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Posted on: November 17, 2020

jackswift85

Verified owner

Games: 464 Reviews: 18

Potential Wasted in Poor Puzzle Design

Obduction starts off great - so much potential. It has all the elements from Myst and Riven that made them classics: intriguing story slowly revealed over the course of the game, mysterious atmosphere and immersive soundtrack, puzzles that integrate the game environment, several moments of "Ah ha!" where you know exactly what to do to unlock the next part of the game. The pacing is slow, but it's deliberate and fits the nature of the game. But Cyan also brought back (with a vengeance) the only bad element from their excellent earlier games: tedious, obtuse puzzle design. For the most part, you don't see this show up in the first hours of the game. The main hub level is designed excellently, with areas that become interconnected as you progress. After you progress enough in the main hub world, you start to run into teleporting puzzles, which require a lot of backtracking, a lot of trial and error, and a metric ton of patience. Remember that godawful "underground maze and you can only navigate by sound" puzzle from Myst? Those puzzles where you flip one switch, and know it must have changed something, but there's no logical clue to tell you what? They're back with huge levels where to even try some puzzles will require backtracking that takes minimum of 5 minutes for each attempt using fast walk, probably double that if you're using point and click or are not using a SSD. You start to realize you'll need to not only switch teleports, but make sure everything is rotated correctly before doing so, all while taking a circuitous route each time, going back through the entire game over and over. Riven cut this down by interconnecting all the areas, and slowly allowed you to realize the solution to the final puzzle through understanding the environment. Obduction throws nothing but tedious and lazy puzzles at you instead. It's quite a shame, this could've been a really great experience if the puzzle & level design was tightened up in the final half of the game.

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Posted on: June 4, 2019

Dehamsteryzator

Verified owner

Games: 502 Reviews: 5

Too much walking

The game is ok, the gameplay is really stretched because of walking and all transportation "riddles". If you try to explore possibilities you are in for lots of walking from A to B with nothing in between. "riddles" are really simple, the biggest challenge is to actually find an object or a place that you had no idea that exists to progress. If you miss that one thing, you can walk next to it 100x and be no wiser. Visuals 10/10.

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Posted on: July 6, 2019

TheSpudGodsHeck

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 1

Too tedious for me.

I like puzzles. I don't even mind backtracking. But the teleportation and its wind up and animations just kill the forward momentum. I've finally given up after getting to a particular planet because there's so much teleportation. I know how to solve the puzzle that's in front of me, but I just don't want to wait for these sequences. To elaborate, the teleportation involves pulling a level, waiting for it to show the teleportation range, hitting a button, and then waiting for what is a pretty novel and attractive sequence. It's fun to watch the first and second time and interesting to play with a few times after that. But after watching it what I feel is a couple dozen times I can't stand to see it even one more time. I don't think this will turn everyone off. If you really enjoy the walking simulator types of games, loved Myst, and are very patient then you'll have no problem here. The scenery is great, the puzzles can be pretty clever, and the story is engaging if sparse.

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