Riven (1997)

After playing Myst (or, more specifically, Real Myst) for the first time, I quickly downloaded Riven. While Riven does have some lovely areas to explore, some great puzzles, and fantastic music, the game itself grows very tedious very quickly. The game picks up where Myst left off: you are to do a favor for Atrus, and then go home. The gameplay begins with the player character aimlessly exploring a series of islands. Unfortunately, this aimless wandering doesn't let up for some time. Pixel hunts are found often, and clues for puzzle solutions are often obscenely vague. Particularly horrendous is the "eyeball puzzle." While Myst did have one or two tedious puzzles (the underwater maze was poorly implemented), it still had some of the greatest puzzles to be found in a game from beginning to end. Riven, on the other hand, does not. Furthermore, Riven has a seemingly non-linear nature: the player can explore several of the aforementioned islands without solving a single puzzle. While this may be nice for the casual crowd, those that actually want to beat the game will find the obscure puzzle solutions and labyrinthine level layout to be headache-inducing. To add insult to injury, this non-linearity is, for the most part, an illusion. Most of the puzzles must be completed in a specific order, and the player will doubtlessly spend many hours wandering about in order to figure out what to do next. Some may find this to be fun. I do not. There is a huge bright side to all of this, however: the presentation. The graphics are great, even in 2010. The entire island seems to come to life with vibrancy and The sound is brilliant as well, and the music is atmospheric and wonderfully composed. It's just a shame that there is no "skip sequence" button, because the player will find himself/herself viewing the same mine cart sequence about fifty times. Nevertheless, the FMV in this game really is great, and the live-action acting is actually pretty good. To conclude, get this game if you are a die-hard fan of Myst clones or a casual gamer looking for some pretty scenery. Otherwise, stay far, far away.

I would gave Riven a 2.5/5 stars. Among the Myst like games it is one of the strongest - the environments look awesome, the sound design is great and the puzzles are as complicated as it says on the tin. Thing is... it is not a kind of game that I like, because I dislike backtracking and all the Myst games consist on backtracking via clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking more to relate some clues to puzzles. There is lot of trial and error, there are many instances of pixel hunting, and in general it consists of puzzles that can be resolved via an algorithm, and if a puzzle can be resolved via algorithm I rather have machines do that puzzle or be paid to code that algorithm. Reviews are generally positive as very few people who disliked Myst got to play Riven, so you know what you get in here. Personally I am more fond of some less ambitious clones like Rhem.

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I was just pulling out some old boxes and found all 5 of my RIVEN CD's, but obviously, they are not compatible with my computer (Mac 10.7.5). Is there no other way besides the iPad to get this game on my computer? I would be SOO excited to play again.

I assumed, maybe naively, that a version adapted to Windows 7 would also have a contemporary resolution. Not so. The game either displays in tiny window in the middle, or when run in 640x480 pixels mode, it has a distorted aspect ratio :-( on any typical 16:9 wide screen, and is simply not enjoyable visually. Besides, I also assumed that Riven would have, like Real Myst, animated movement during navigation. This game is though rather like the original Myst: Mostly a display of static images, being replaced during navigation through the Islands. Not really a contemporary state of art, I am afraid.