Obduction ®

Omigosh. It's the most tedious gameplay I've ever seen. There are more graphically impressive 3 D games that have no loading screens at all these days. This game has the most excrutiating loading screens I've ever seen. There's a section toward the end where you must solve a maze in two worlds. You turn a few gears run halfway across the map, load into a new planet to turn a few more gears and load it up again over and over and over again. It's like a small torture. And given the fact that there are no particularly new puzzles in this thing, I guarantee that just waiting to move forward will be all I will remember about this thing when I think back on it in a year. There are a few good things. The second world is impressively designed from an artistic standpoint. And I like the soundtrack. But there are more bad things too, like the plot that is told in the most boring way possible. Or the fact that the fourth world has nothing to do in it.

As someone who likes adventure games but rarely gets far without help its quite a thing for me to get 90% through the game on my own. I don't know if I'm getting better or if Cyan did a better job at building this game than a lot of their peers. Its probably because of Cyan and it too bad some of their other choices are so far out of sync with an otherwise solid development. The first problem here is the engine. I'm running it on a ATI card that is 1 generation removed from top of the line and I have to turn down the game detected recommended settings to low for smooth operation and medium for tolerable. Also, its disappointing that they relied on ugly FMV for the people, an explosion, and a fire. The puzzles do a good job driving the story forward. There are a few that seem to do be built to take a lot of time. That's not a big deal but still worth noting. The short story: Obduction is a great game for folks who are sick of combat driven games or are looking to try out the adventure genre. The game and the experience it offers would be better served by a different game engine.

To keep things pithy, I really enjoyed the first half of the game, and found the second half to be unnecessarily frustrating due to poor game design. The inital puzzles you come across are challenging and very fun to solve, but as you move onto other areas the game requires you to teleport back and forth in order to progress. It becomes incredibly redundent as you swap between worlds dozens of times for the remainder of the puzzles, each time meaning a loading screen to stare at. If not for the constant swapping, I'd have had more fun.

This is indeed a "Myst-like" Adventure game. It has a similar style of wandering through unique landscapes, interacting with machinery and generally being confused about what's happening. With a little work it could have been pretty great but falls a bit flat as a whole package. Like Myst games there is no inventory and the primary hurdle is usually getting from A to B The latter part hurts this game some in that unlike it's predecessors Obduction is full roam 3D and often suffers from what I call "poor barriers" Many times you will do a load of puzzling or work simply because your character can't scramble over a small rock pile, scooch down a small cliff, climb up a small wall or reach through a gap to unlock a door from the other side. It can be a bit immersion breaking being blocked by such contrivances. Story wise it starts pretty strong but leaves a bit too much out to make the end feel satisfying, Overall what hurts the game the most is a handful of tedious puzzles and a few situations where the path forward seems arbitrarily blocked and unblocks for poor reasons. I will say there is indeed one puzzle near the end that is not terribly difficult to solve but is so abysmally designed that it might take you an hour to actually execute the damn solution. The mechanisms of the puzzle are far apart requiring walking, mechanical interaction, waiting for animations, and continuously sends you back and forth through loading zones making the whole thing a grindy slog.

I re-played Real Myst Masterpiece before getting Obduction, so that original experience is still pretty fresh. Obduction really takes the essence of what made Myst magical - the immersive world, the eerie-yet-familiar landscapes, the bread-crumb trail story telling - and puts in into a truly fresh package. Cyan really expanded on Obduction - the first area is huge compared to Myst Island and stuffed with enough to do to keep you occupied before even thinking of going anywhere else. The visuals are eye-poppingly beautiful - this is definitely a game you want at as high a resolution as possible! There is just a fantastic mix of really familiar settings and the alien landscapes that are thoughtfully designed (and gave me a bit of shudder). My only real caveat (and the reason for one missing star, though I would have made more like a half star off) is that the game is a little buggy, with some long loading times (like get-up-and-use-the-bathroom-and-a-drink-of-water loading times). In some areas movement would just abruptly stop for no reason even where there were no obstructions. One part kept turning my character around in the same spot for a few minutes before letting me move forward. The 'hint glimmer' sometimes threw me off because I would see something like it on far-away objects. Or maybe like a desert mirage the game's lighting is meant to play tricks on you. As a long-time Myst fan (who's still waiting for updated versions of Riven and Myst 3) I'm thrilled with the game so far.