Obduction ®

Touching and original story, fascinating landscapes, puzzles that perfectly blend with the storytelling - what else to ask for?

Many people remember the "Myst" games from the nineties with fondness and would if asked answer that they want more of those games. And so eventually Cyan studios answered their prayers with this game. A "Myst" game, but with a new story and world and in first person 3D rather than hyper cards. Cyan made it faithful to the original with new tech, but this as it turns out, is not necessarily a good thing. With full 3D, walking everywhere, the world while beautiful, comes off as artificial and fake. Moon logic puzzles were more acceptable in a world made up of cards, rather than one that looks real. I mean I could climb a lot of obstacles in this game in real life. A geriatric could climb a few of them and Gordon Freeman would clear this game in 30 min flat. But there are no jump or climb buttons in this game, so you are forced to follow the games arbitrary puzzle logic instead. The worst example of this comes in the second world you visit. You are blocked by a railcar that sits in your path. A normal person would just squeeze past the 40 cm gap in the blockade. Even a very fat person could do that. But instead you must run around the entire world twice and be teleported to other worlds a couple of times so that you can reach a switch to move the railcar... Not to mention that movement is much slower than in previous games due to the 3D. In Myst you could Super Run by klickin the next button really fast and as such no place were far from any other place. In this game you can only walk to places or "run" slowly. That means that transportation times are huge. Most of your time is not spent solving puzzles. It is spent transporting yourself. Also, why cant you speak to NPCs? In Myst it made sense because you only had one way communication, but in this game there is no such thing blocking you. And many NPCs are assholes. Why are you listening to them anyway?

Good game with good puzzles. They seemed a bit too simple sometimes but it held my interest. The story was good. The main drawback was the length of the game.

very pretty graphics, i think. puzzles are fairly easy. but there are some really tedious design choices: all that teleporting makes you spend a lot of time starring at the loading screen.

Maze is a complete gamedesign failure.