Riven (1997)

THIS IS IT. This simply is one of the best adventure games ever made. It changed the landscape for adventure games forever, and raised the bar for other developers. After all those years this one still stand on top alone ! The world is so believable and atmospheric that you truly get a sense of being there. The puzzles are so clever and integrated within the environments, that it can suck you in for hours. I've been lost on these islands for many hours, and loved every second of it. Truly recommended !

I was able to replay this old game on my Win 8 64 bit Laptop without a hiccup, glitch, etc. And as a bonus, all my Old Save games worked like a charm. Since it was so long ago that I played this game and my old brain forgets things easily, it seemed like I had never played this game, so many things were no longer familiar and I had to hit the walkthrough many times to get me through it. But nonetheless, a lot of fun and still a very decent game considering its age.

It's not often you see a sequel which improves on the original in every way, but Cyan really took their time in making Riven. A direct continuation from Myst, the style of gameplay is relatively unchanged; point and click, first-person perspective, flick screen graphics. The flick screen element may not appeal to everyone, but there's a LOT of images in the game, so you get a reasonably good feel of your position in the world (unlike Myst, which had some huge steps which could easily disorient). The puzzles themselves are really what this game is all about, and they are fiendish. This to me is a good thing; I grow increasingly weary with game puzzles which are dumbed down for mass appeal. Although the puzzles are difficult in Riven, they are also logical, so with enough note taking and raw brain-work, you should be able to get through them. However, there is one critical puzzle which relies heavily on sound. On my Win XP x64 system there were some glitches with sound in animations, which meant that the puzzle was impossible to solve without a guide, so be aware of this. The graphics and sounds are superb, as you'd expect. The 16-bit renders are a huge improvement over Myst's 256 colour images and really help bring the world to life. The only area in which Riven does not improve over its predecessor is the plot. That's not to say it's worse - it still just feels inconsequential. Here you are, stuck on Riven. Here you go running round solving puzzles... but at no point do you ever really find out WHY you're doing this. The entire plot can be summed up in one sentence: "The world of Riven is falling apart, you must go there to imprison the evil Gahn, rescue the fair Catherine and hopefully escape back home". And it doesn't really get explained in any more depth than that, even with the REAMS of text in Catherine's and Gehn's diaries. I would have preferred a little more character interaction, but I guess we can't have our cake and eat it. Problems aside though, Riven is a great game which will keep you thinking for days on end, and at just under 4 quid, you can't really go wrong.

After the Myst team hired their newest member and began making Riven, the fantasy-based romance puzzle genre took a darker tone. Made with real photo's, this game has always remained flawless immersion even to todays standards. If any one has not played this game, seriously, Buy it

My friend got this game from me, i thought it was a brand new game, it looks amazing. It is the most immerse game I have ever played.