Riven (1997)

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I expected a Myst-kind of game where you travel across worlds, solve puzzles to move further, and uncover mysteries. But most of the time in Riven I found myself completely lost in a huge world with a few places I could interact with. I had to look into guides to understand that I missed some object or path. I liked the puzzle with the platform rotating around the sphere in three dimensions, but slow movement, slow animations, and long cutscenes made me bored.

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.

But this is the worst version I have seen. Everything is compressed to Pixelania... It is so compressed so bad that the game is not enjoyable. A big part of the game is the nature, scenery, strange buildings, etc. But with this 1.6GB version it is so pixelated because of compressing that I will delete it and continue to search for the DVD-verson... I have tried my friends Riven (5 CD's) so I know how it should have been. (I want the DVD-version, so I don't have to switch CD's all the time.) If all games are compressed like this, I will never buy games from here...