Aura: Fate of the Ages
by Dreamcatcher Interactive
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Our Price: $19.99 Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks Buy Used: from $9.99 (click here) Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Aura: Fate of the Ages
Customer Review: Couldn't stop playing
Summary: 5 Stars
This game is a must if you like Puzzle/adventure games.
The puzzles are not as hard as the Myst series or Alone in the Dark which I found refreshing. Can't wait for Aura II.
Customer Review: A little stupid but pretty good over all.
Summary: 3 Stars
This game has a story but it's flakey and dumb. But the graphics are good and the puzzles are quite good, bordering on exellent!
If you buy this game BE SURE TO DOWNLOAD THE PATCH OR YOU WILL HAVE TECH PROBLEMS!! Do a net search for "Aura patch" It should be no problem to find. Once it's patched you are good to go.
Fun puzzles. Not the best game but worth the full price nonetheless!
Customer Review: Very good, with some minor room for improvement
Summary: 3 Stars
Pros:
-great graphics/animation/lighting
-complex and difficult puzzles varying in difficulty and application (so as not to seem redundant).
Cons:
-Audio.... The synthesized "orchestration" and sound effects are, at best, fair. Sometimes, poor. Many sound effects sound far different than the objects you are interacting with should. The "score" is much less emersive than what I would expect for a game of this type. It doesn't set the mood as well as I would have liked and sometimes, its plain annoying.
All in all however, its a real good game. Well worth the $20 I spent on it. The sound effects and score are minor contentions that the rest of the game more than makes up for. If you're a fan of the genre, you can't go wrong with it.
Customer Review: I'd love to be able to play the whole game, but...
Summary: 1 Stars
My review could be an exact copy of what J. Tyson wrote on August 17:
enjoyed playing this game up to the point it becomes impossible. How is this? It started in Dragast, the second stage of the game. The first puzzle I encountered was visually blocked out by green and white vertical lines that cover the entire screen. I thought maybe this was an isolated problem. I was able to get by this one puzzle referring to a walkthrough (kind of ruins it for me). The very next puzzle had a similar problem. I contacted Dreamcatcher and was given a patch to download and install that was supposed to fix the problem. No such luck. I have since been requested to provide some information from my pc and I am waiting for a response. This problem occured with two separate sets of disks. Only some of the puzzles are affected. I think the graphics are great and would love to be able to play this game minus the problems
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I've done EVERYTHING company has advised over their website, to no avail. It would be REAL NICE to spend this kind of money for some enjoyment and get GRIEF instead. Otherwise, as far as it goes (up until Dragast), it's a pretty nice game. Nice if company did more for quality control.
Customer Review: Solid Myst Clone
Summary: 4 Stars
In the world of _Aura_, "the Elders" of your people have learned the secrets of constructing alternate realities. The key to this power lies in a set of magical rings and sacred artifacts scattered throughout several dimensions. From time to time, students are sent out to try to unite the rings and artifacts as part of their training. Few succeed. You play Umang, the latest student to undertake this quest. Shortly into your adventure, you learn that civil war has broken out among "the clans" and a powerful warlord now wishes to seize the rings and artifacts for himself. It's even more important that you get to them first!
Aura is a lovely 1st person game in the tradition of Myst, with many mechanical puzzles--devices to repair, vehicles to get running and secret passages to uncover--few inventory puzzles and virtually no conversations. What interaction with other characters there is occurs in cut scenes. Occasionally you get information, but it rarely moves the story along. So, for fans of puzzle driven games _Aura_ is a treat. It's been a long time since I've played a game so satisfyingly complex; in fact, I was stymied several times in the beginning just because I wasn't used to puzzles being challenging. But if you prefer 3rd person, character and story driven games, you might not like this one so much.
I ran _Aura_ on WIN XP on an AMD 2800 2-odd gig processor with a relatively new graphics card with no trouble at all; in fact, I was very, very pleased at the smoothness of the game. I did install the patch up front, however; I had been warned about possible glitches and wanted to avoid them. So I would recommend doing this.
Graphics are quite lovely, with 360-degree panning. I did find the panning somewhat nauseating at times, something that has not affected me for a long while. Sound was unremarkable--neither bad nor good. As is standard in this kind of game, each location has its own little musical motif. Most of them are unmemorable, except for the one that bears a striking resemblance to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."
Saves are unlimited, but you only get to see one saved game at a time when either saving or loading, and you can't name then for yourself; you're only given an image and a time/date. So it's hard to keep track of them. There are no timed puzzles and no action sequences. There is one section where you can be killed, but you are immediately allowed to try again from where you made your mistake, as many times as necessary.
So why only four stars? There was quite a bit of pixel hunting and places where hotspots were not immediately apparent. Where hotspots were close together, it was hard to tell the difference between them. I think this could have been easily remeied by making the active cursor a little more different from the inactive cursor. In one section the main puzzle was extremely incoherent and there was no indication whatsoever when you managed to solve it, meaning that you tended to wander around the area looking for something else to do for quite some time until you either checked a walkthrough to see what you missed or gave up and moved on by chance. Although the box claims that you have "four distinct realities to explore," you only spend about ten seconds in the 4th before the game is over. I think that's quite dishonest. The ending was a little abrupt and contrived to set up the obligatory sequel. Plus, there are a couple things that happen to you early in the game that you *know* are going to turn out badly (making a deal with someone who is obviously a bad guy, for example) that you can't do anything about.
Still, _Aura_ was a very enjoyable and absorbing game,about 25 long hours with one place where I needed a little direction. I had looked forward to it for quite some time and it did not disappoint.