Myst "URU" .... anyone else played it?

[RicknMel]

Hi gang! :)
Some of you might remember that Mel and I enjoy playing the Myst games together.
Well, we recently got URU, and are almost done with it.

I think it's the best Myst yet, as far as graphics and puzzles, but I can't stand the VERY clunky controls for walking/turning/jumping ..etc.
I feel like an idiot trying to do something as simple as walk or jump over something.
Luckly, Mel does 99% of the playing (controlling).. I'm just there for moral support. :D

Opinions on the game in general?

:)

[Gumdrop]

Well I have not baught/played the game yet becouse of the "clunky" controls you mention, but I do like the Myst series so I may indulge when the price comes down. I also read that the puzzles might be a little too easy compared to other games. I found this to be true of Exile, although the Materia age had me frowning for a while.

Did you ever get round to playing Exile? I remember you said you would wait until the price came down and you had a new system. Riven is still king, but Exile is worth getting hold of.

[RicknMel]

Yeah, we played Exile a while back. We liked that one too.
Isn't that the one where they first introduced the "freelook" thang?

You're probably right about the puzzles being a little easier in URU. Maybe thats why we like it. :D

The first MYST was terribly hard and confusing for us. I consider myself fairly intelligent, but we got soooooo lost in the first Myst with those goofy puzzles that had no ryme or reason.

I like the satisfaction of being able to figure things out on our own. So far, we looked up very small 1 hint for one puzzle, and totally cheated on another. But other than those 2 times, we've solved everything else on our own.
And for the record... the one we totally cheated on still makes NO sense to me. :rolleyes: (Typical "classic" Myst puzzle) :D
We're currently about half way done with the last "age". And I have to say again how I LOVE the Myst eye candy. I could just walk around and look at stuff all day. :)

[Peter Smith]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for posting this. I stopped at Riven and became absorbed with Thief, but I ought to buy another. I really enjoyed Myst and Riven. My first exposure to all-night gaming. :D

[Rommel_1891]

I played throught the original, I loved it. I want to get RealMyst, the full motion version.

I tried to play Riven when it came out, but I couldn't get into it. If I see a RealRiven come out, then I will. The frame to fram movement drove me nuts after a while. Honestly though, I don't really have time to get into a game like that anymore. :(:D

[Old Man]

I fully intend to get Uru when I've upgraded my old computer. In fact, I reloaded and played Myst, Riven, Exile and realMyst and I've been keeping up at the Uru forums. Yes, the controls and the simplicity are noted as poor by not just a few.

It seems Uru is intended by Cyan to be primarily a MMORPG and that's what I'm curious about (not quite as wide-eyed as I was for the first Quake on-line experience until coming across the dark side but still looking forward to this.) Sad thing is it doesn't appear to be quite ready for online play yet. And at ~$10/month subscription they'd have to produce a new age almost monthly to compare to the single-player version.

Of course I'm waiting on Thief III for the computer upgrade but then we'll see. Uru Live should be in better shape by then anyways.

[Edit/Update]My wife just walked in from her w/e 'shop 'til you drop' with Uru: Ages Beyond Myst which she had intended to get me for Christmas so that removes all the doubt. I'll be there.[/Edit/Update]

[Gumdrop]

I too baught realMyst and was looking forward to the new age. Well, the original ages do look fantastic... particularly the Stoneship & Channelwood ages, but the new age (Rhyme?) was a bit of a letdown. The thawing effect is really nice, and I spent a long time at the end of one of the piers... watching the whale-like creatures swim past ...but all in all not much to it. :(

I will buy Uru though, so am interested to see if the updates are more substatial. I hope the music is as nice as the previous games.

[Peter Smith]

Here is a review (http://pc.ign.com/articles/444/444432p1.html). It looks good, so I guess I will buy it.

[littlek]

Never played any of the Myst series. So do you just run around, solve puzzles to get from one place to the next and oogle the scenery?

[RicknMel]

Thats pretty much it littlek ,... but you make it sound so "blah"
:D ;)

But the puzzles are very neat. And the scenery is awesome.
There are some places that really take your breath away.
The "worlds" you visit are truly beautiful. And I'm serious when I say that I could walk around the worlds for hours just to look at stuff and play with the machinery and equipment you find.

Some of the puzzles really make you think outside the box.
For example.....

In one "world", you come across a VERY dark cave you must get through. We got stuck there for hours. There's no way you can "luck" your way through it, Turns out, that there are some fireflys (lightning bugs) in another world, and when you walk through them, they follow you. You need to go get a batch of them and make them follow you from world to world so they can guide you through the cave. They are very finicky though.... you can't run ot get wet or they leave you, and they will only let you jump once before they leave you. So not only did you have to figure out to GET the fireflys, you also need to figure a way to get them into the cave without running, jumping more than once, or getting wet.

Very strange stuff.
:p

[littlek]

Didn't mean to sound that way...I was in the middle of grading some very poorly done papers that my students did. I did visit the site that Peter posted and you are right, those scenes are spectacular. I may have to start playing those. Do you recommend to just jump into Uru or start at the first game in the series? And will the first Myst play on WinX with a Pentium 4?

Those fireflies sound fun...I like unpredicatable tweaks like that.

[Gumdrop]

More fireflies?! I have had enough trouble with them in Curse of Monkey Island! :(

Littlek - There is a 10th anniversary DVD boxed set of the first 3 games, but it depends on how much spare cash you have. I would play realMyst instead of the original Myst, but if you also play Riven, you could be in there for quite a while. Riven is a tough nut to crack, and it was only after many hours visiting all the islands that I finally started to see how everything fit together.

[theBlackman]

No to the original question, but I just got the demo so I'll took a look. :D

Have not read the thread just in case there are spoilers. I have Myst 1 and 2 and Riven, so this is just another gambit to suck me in. :D

[RicknMel]

littlek .....
The earlier Myst games might help you get into the brains of the designers. Maybe help you to be thinking like they think when trying to solve the puzzles, but....

The 1st Myst and Riven are "point and click" interfaces.
Meaning, that you can't "walk", you just point in a direction, and you are transported to the next "scene". You can't even look around. It's just a series of pictures you jump to and from.
Kind of hard to explain unless you've played a game set up like that.

The 3rd one (Myst Exile) added "free-look", where you still "point and click" from scene to scene, but at each "scene" you can freely look around as if you were standing still in Thief.

URU is the first game in the Myst series where you can actually walk, run and jump almost anywhere you ant to go, very similar to Thief. (except the VERY clunky control bindings)

But with all that said.... they are all great games IMO, and you need NO experience in the previous games to play the later games. They don't "intertwine" at all.

The only one we haven't played is "RealMyst". And unless we see it in a bargain bin somewhere, we probably never will.

[theBlackman]

RicknMel I have Real Myst. Have not played it yet. You may just end up with a copy. I find I am not a real true Myst fan. So in time you might get lucky. :D

[RicknMel]

Originally posted by theBlackman
RicknMel I have Real Myst. Have not played it yet. You may just end up with a copy. I find I am not a real true Myst fan. So in time you might get lucky. :D

No... I'm married now.... I don't get lucky anymore. :o :D :p

What don't you like about the Myst series tBM?

[theBlackman]

Interesting story. Interesting puzzles, but for some reason it has a tendency to make me "ho hum". Not bore me, just does not fire my interest all that much.

I am serious though about donating it to the RicknMel collection. If I don't fire it up soon, then for certain you may get a belated Xmas present.

Or maybe:


http://www.ruthann1.com/VDb2_wel.jpg


http://www.conceptart.org/forums/images/smilies/asthanos.gif

[Vanguard]

Myst, Riven, RealMyst, and Exile. That's as much money as they get from me for that piss poor game. Yeah, the graphics are great but you are never *in* the game. You get lots of POVs (point of views) where you get a bubble view of beautiful scenery around you. Nothing is 3 dimensional (except the ingame movies they play, like you watching an elevator pod going up and down). The game has as much 3D as a painted canvass.

You don't get to lean over anything. You have to stick to preset paths (except in Real Myst which had the ability to roam anywhere in the map but didn't get used in Exile much to the disappointment of Myst fans). I never felt that I was actually there. More like a little floating droid zipping around fixed paths showing you lots of scenery. If you want to look at lots of exquisite but static 2D scenery, you can get it for free on the Internet.

The only reason I continued playing any of the Myst series was the puzzles. The music is great, too, and it would be nice if they provided the music in a file format where you could just play the music and environmental sounds. But the gameplay sucks. They use decade old technology and still want to charge $35 for a game which is basically wandering through a museum of fine 2D paintings (that wrap all around you). Unless URU changed its mode of gameplay (i.e., if it is still like the prior games in the series), they get some artists to draw correlated bubble views, do a storyboard, and use decade old gaming technology to sell to the suckers that think it would be a game equivalent to those currently defining the quality of gaming market today. Just because it is released now doesn't make it a new game. Maybe released 7 years ago it might've been considered impressive.

Since their download of their demo at http://www.gigex.com/pc/title/downloads/?id=2368&source=00001 doesn't work (no download starts), I can't see what they might be trying to foist on their fanbase again. My opinions are based on the prior games in the Myst series. I've heard no huge boom in the gaming news extolling Uru's fantastic game engine or gameplay mode. From articles, like http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/uruonlineagesbeyondmyst/review.html, it's really not a 1st person game anymore. Instead you wander around like a hoverbot looking at your avatar. Super yuck! I've played those games before. I've never felt I was *in* the game because of it. And with the bubble view of 2D scenery on fixed paths, I definitely would not feel like I'm in the game.

If Thief3 was nothing more than a bunch of missions strung together which ran atop the old T1 engine, I wouldn't bother wasting my money on it. FMs are a plenty that already run on those old game engines. Uru looks to be a new set of bubble views slapped atop a decade old game engine. Nothing I want to waste my money on.

[RicknMel]

Vanguard.... URU isn't like the others. You can walk/run/jump/look/climb almost anywhere you want to go, similar to Thief. And it also doesn't have to be 3rd person. You can toggle back and forth anytime you want to.

Besides the annoying controls, the only other thing I didn't like was the fact that you can't pick anything up. For example.. There's a few items you need to move things from point A to point B, (like moving a box so you can climb up on it) and you have to push them around since you can't pick them up. You can, however, pick up things like books and scrolls to read them.

:)

[Huntress]

I just got the demo of URU (with DE_IW :( ) in my PC Gamer mag's disk and when I get my other machine back (yes, I'm still in wait mode) maybe I'll plug it in just to take a gander. I'm not very good a puzzles but the way RicknMel describes the world, I'd kindof like to see it :) However, with the mess that DE_IW's demo turned out to be, I don't care to do all the tweaks that are necessary to have it play half way decent :( What a let down that has turned out to be for me. I just won't accept the terms they expect you to like in order to play "their" game :( It isn't just one thing, you know, the changes in the game/gameplay...it's many many reasons combined that discourage me from going along with their idea of what they think the PC community at large will want on their HDD's....sorry I got a bit off track but this is really nagging at me!!!! Ta and Good Hunting!

[MsLedd]

Ugh... the game sounded like a lot of fun, but the controls were SO bad I couldn't stand the demo. I really wish I could enjoy it, but I was clawing at my face and banging my head against the keyboard from the incredible suckiness, there was just no way.

Pity.

[edit]Huntress, I will say that the full game of DX:IW (with the patch) takes care of much of the problems the demo has.

[Huntress]

Yea Ms. Ledd, I'm aware of the fixes..both ways...forum and minor patch they made later. Not enough for my perferred way of playing. I thoughly enjoyed and still enjoy the original...am on my sixth or seventh play through as of now...and they took too many things away from the game/gameplay that has ruined it for me to want to have it anymore :( If they screw up T3 in a similiar way...which looks to be happening...I won't get it either :mad: and that will bring the conclusion to buying anymore IOS/Eidos games for me! They can keep their Xbox made for games and ports to the PC...ain't for me folks :( Ta and Good Hunting!

[RicknMel]

"incredible suckiness"
LOL :D

Are you talking about URU or the other game MsLedd?
:)

[MsLedd]

Rick, sorry I was referring to URU... it certainly looks interesting and fun, but I just can't handle the suckitude of the controls :/

[Saturnine]

Msledd: Did you try playing it in first person?
I played the whole thing in first person and it was fine, I liked the game a lot although Riven still beats the rest.

btw; Did you manage to get a big enough rack on your avatar? :D

[Gumdrop]

LOL Saturnine. I love the little pic in your sig! :D

[Old Man]

A little update for those of you who may have bought and played the game. The "Live", MMORPG, portion of URU was cancelled due to lack of interest. They had tens of thousands when they needed hundreds of thousands. As a peace offering to the fans, Cyan and UbiSoft took some of the Uru Live content and packaged it up and released it as an expansion pack. There may even be some new content as well. The first Expansion Pack was released yesterday.

URU - To D'ni Expansion Pack download links (http://www.uruobsession.com/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=8244&).

I've only played it for a few hours but it seems just an extension of the retail version. It's totally free so go get it. Beware of Gigex, though. There is some discussion that their download method installs spyware on your system.

[Apache]

Have you read any of the books?
Very well written IMHO..

[Old Man]

I read the first one. A long, long time ago. Haven't kept up with the more recent writings. The uberfans at the URU boards have memorized them. I'm just an old adventure gamer and like the way these Myst games play.

[Chiefdreams]

I played the demo and the controls did suck. I went to the web site to complain but they didn't want any advice.
I read where they were sad that they couldn't get enough people to do the MP. Clueless idiots.
I played the first two Myst's games and enjoyed them.

[Old Man]

The basic problem with the controls, CD, IMHO, is that there's no freelook. I recall back in the early Quake days this freelook option made it really easy to find your way around. Because all you had to do was move the mouse around to look around. Get it? Such a simple solution. Anyhow, Cyan made it so you have to hold down a button (right, I think) and also move the mouse to look around. What a pain. And I think they're still dealing with point-and-click thinking. The cursor will move around the screen and that's where you'll move to if you move. Instead of the screen moving the view around the cursor which stays in the centre of the screen. Or is it just another way of doing things and we're not used to it yet. I've played Uru and now the Expansion Pack and I still can't get the hang of the controls. I'm always heading off in odd directions. Plus the cursor fades off the screen after only a few seconds of nonmovement which means you've got to wiggle the mouse to get the cursor back so you can see where you're headed. Then again they're having to work the third person perspective too so whatever complications that adds in. It's not a rush, rush game so I don't mind taking my time playing it. Makes the awkward controls a little easier to swallow. Different strokes ...

[Chiefdreams]

I couldn't have said it better, Old Man.

[Old Man]

You drive that big, shiny, new airbus with just a stick, throttle, and footpedals, CD? Yeah, I know, with all this computerized flying now it's probably point-and-click now too! ;)

[Chiefdreams]

Actually it's more like dos.

[Guineapiggy]

I wonder what our friend mr W.Spector would have to say about Myst, eh? I must admit I like it but I got incredibly annoyed when I had gotten really far in to Myst 3 and had to reformat and haven't played since. I also played Myst 1 but frankly the control system makes even the thought of being stranded on a creepy island attractive...

Incidentally, any Myst fans may enjoy playing this somewhat eccentric little web game:

Escape From the Crimson Room (http://www.datacraft.co.jp/takagism/index_e.html)

[Belboz]

This is URU:Ages Beyond Myst with free addon pack.

http://www.daboys.co.uk/downloads/uru01.jpg
http://www.daboys.co.uk/downloads/uru02.jpg
http://www.daboys.co.uk/downloads/uru03.jpg
http://www.daboys.co.uk/downloads/uru04.jpg
http://www.daboys.co.uk/downloads/uru05.jpg

[Old Man]

I made a point of hotfooting it to my Relto to dump that DRC vest, belboz. Kept feeling like I was being watched, looking over my shoulder, wondering if I'd get stoned. :)

[clayman]

I've always wondered about this series of games, so I read the whole thread and my verdict is....NO ! :)

This game would drive me stark raving mad, I just know it. Although the last screenshots were pretty. But not for me. I'm going to be the last homo sapien to play Splinter Cell; that should take me safely to June and T3. :)

[Old Man]

You might possibly get through a whole entire case of scotch or leepfrog or whatever your tasty beverage is playing this one guy. Care to reconsider? ;)

[Huntress]

I just read today in one of my recent GameSpy newsletters that a Myst IV is going to be made. I've not played it or care much for that style of gameplay either but the pic's are very pretty for sure :) Ta and Good Hunting!

[Chiefdreams]

I realy wanted to play Splinter Cell but 3rd person is not for me.
I'm planning on making Fan Missions for RTCW until I can play T3.

[Huntress]

I went over to Best Buy the other day and not finding the game I was looking for (Sacred) I ended up getting a couple of others until I can get down to Fry's to look there, I bought "AOE gold" (even though I have "AOE" full) I wanted the two add-ons it comes with as I never got those and didn't want to buy them later on. Then I also bought one I almost got a few weeks ago, "Warcraft III and the strategy book" as I'm sure I'll need some help with it sooner or later :) Have to wait to put that one in however until I get my other system back.

I went over to the shop again the other day to oversee some of the applications I wanted him to put back in but ran into trouble trying to get my emails to transfer over from one HDD to the other...(damn MS) so he's been trying to figure out how to get it done without me having to copy/paste each one into a read file to put into "My Documents" folder. Even tried a double boot of sorts to see if we could forward (email) the darn things to my new account but it wouldn't cooperate as that HDD is the flakey one and the reason for a whole new install on my newer HDD I had bought and is now the Master. The good news is, is that it's getting closer to getting fixed so I can get it home again and finish the setups here, etc. :) Patience is a virtue so they say and I just have to be so virtueous by now...I might be even able to "ghost everything" now! LOL Ta and Good Hunting!