I remember rather enjoying the demo of TJP2 which I got off the cover of a PC Format magazine back in the 90s, and I'd enjoyed playing the first one, but I never picked up the full version of it. I saw it on GoG and figured I'd give it a go for old time's sake, after all, the reviews here were all glowing. Well. I can only assume that the reviews on this site were written by people who remembered the game fondly from their childhoods and had not played it recently, or people who have never played any game since the 90s, or sadomasochists, or mac users (last two are essentially the same). The controls are TERRIBLE. Every turn you make is disorienting in the extreme. It makes it very difficult to work out how to get to a place you want to go to or whic direction you're currently facing (especially in the space station). When you're exploring you can instantly die, which means exploration is just not fun, and you have to keep breaking your immersion to save the game. Some of the puzzles require items which are hidden in the environment, which wouldn't be a problem if the controls weren't so awful, or if the game mechanics didn't mean that EVERY TIME ZONE RESETS WHEN YOU LEAVE, EVEN THOUGH IT'S NECESSARY TO LEAVE AND REENTER SOME TIME ZONES SEVERAL TIMES, MEANING YOU HAVE TO WATCH THE SAME OLD BADLY ACTED CUTSCENES OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Also why doesn everyone think that Arthur is "hilarious"? He sometimes says some interesting enough things regarding the time period you're in, but he's never funny. I assume that the baby boomers and mac users dishing out the 5 star reviews don't have a particularly great sense of humour. FMV is poorly acted, interface is slow and clunky, having to retrace your steps is excruciating, and hunting for objects with the fear of imminent death hanging over your head like the sword of damocles is DULL. Still, the concept isn't too bad, so it at least deserves two stars. Get it on sale if you hate yourself.
The story behind The Moment of Silence is great, and as relevant now as it was 14 years ago. However, I found myself fighting against the game engine almost all the time, trying to trigger scene changes, or pixel hunting to find the one point on the screen I have to click. In addition there were several puzzles where I knew EXACTLY what I had to do, but the game wanted me to do things in a specific order. Oh you have a VCR, a TV and a cable? Cool. Plug the cable into the tv? NOPE. Combine the cable with the VCR? NOPE. use the VCR with the TV? NOPE. Plut the VCR on the TABLE, and then connect the cable? Yep. And at no point did my character offer hints that this was the way things should be done. Another puzzle involved me needing to return a key to an unconscious guard. I didn't know that this was what I had to do until I consulted a walkthrough. When I tried to advance, all my character said was "not yet". Just the addition of a line saying "better put the key back in his pocket beforte he wakes up" would have saved me a lot of headscratching. And the final puzzle was SUCH a chore, all that running around and adjusting satellite dishes by trial and error? Nope. 2 stars for the story, because it's a good-un. But the game frustrates.
When I was 19 years old I used to regularly visit my game store and often saw this on the shelf. I's pick it up over and over considering the purchase, but it was 30 quid and I was a poor student. I was a HUGE JRPG fan back then, and I have to admit I REALLY wanted to play the game but never got round to it. After a while it went forgotten. Then last year the game popped up in a steam sale and I thought that 99p was a fair price to pay to indulge my curiosity. Bugs prevented the game from loading and I never actually got round to playing it. Recently however, GOG released an update and it all works very well on my Arch Linux system. The storyline is a nice sci-fi adventure, there's a really great world that has been constructed, and your character motivation is a good one. While the storyline sucked me in, the combat spat me back out. It's VERY much of its time. Borrowing heavily from Chronotrigger is no bad thing necessarily, but the pacing of the battles is pretty tedious. The variety in enemies also leaves a lot to be desired, with only about 20 differnt enemy types, and everything else just being a recolouring of these sprites. Still, the game has kept me entertained for a solid twenty six hours so far, and I fully intend to reach the end, despite the fact that occasionally I need to refer to an FAQ to find out exactly what I'm supposed to do at any given time. Throw away your rose tinted glasses and take the game for what it is; a turn of the century sci fi RPG game with turn of the century game mechanics and a reasonably interesting story. For 99p you really can't go wrong.
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.
