Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
by Ubisoft
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Video Game Reviews of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
Customer Review: Fantastic play
Summary: 5 Stars
This game and it's expansion packs are the best I've ever seen. Unlike most games of this type, you have an actual character that you build. You can take screenshots using your PC. In the first expansion, you can take pictures within game and starting with the second expansion, you can keep an in-game journal. The areas of play are highly detailed and very realistic. Closest you can come to a holodeck in today's world!Customer Review: Excellent but flawed game
Summary: 4 Stars
Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is an outstanding game with exceptional images, sounds and puzzles ... so why four stars and not five?Uru has two significant flaws:
1) You can't save your game.
Your save points are set by touching each Age's seven Journey Cloths. It's the game designers - not the gamer - who determines save points.
Good save points make it easy for the gamer to explore alternate endings, and more importantly, to avoid having to solve the same puzzle repeatedly.
But unless you play Uru perfectly, some Journey Cloths are placed so that you must solve several puzzles multiple times.
2) Your avatar can walk, run, climb and jump.
Unlike Myst, Riven and Exile, Uru is no longer restricted to point-and-click movement from one scene to the next.
But there's a problem.
Your avatar is keyboard and mouse controlled, not joystick enabled. Its third person perspective is occasionally sloppy. Moreover, it can't use its hands when moving objects; that's a ridiculous constraint.
Uru's minimum hardware requirements are...
800 MHz Pentium/AMD Athlon
250 MB RAM
32 MB nVidia GForce 1 - 4 or FX/ATI Radeon 7000 - 9800 or better
Assuming you don't want long delays between Age loads, I strongly recommend, "or better."
My guess, Uru really wants a 2 GHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM and a 128 MB video card. Uru is designed for higher end hardware.
Uru also has hardware requirement gotchas. Here are some of them...
* 98SE is specific; no allowance is made for Windows 98.
* The video card requirement is precise: it's either a 32 MB nVidia GForce 1 - 4 or FX, or an ATI Radeon 7000 - 9800 or better.
No other video card will work, including lower end versions of nVidia or ATI Radeon.
* The "CD-ROM: 4x or better (not recommended for use with CD-RWs)" requirement is imprecise. Didn't fully appreciate it until I bought the expansion pack, which clearly states, "This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some disk and virtual drives."
Uru will not work properly in either a CD-R or CD-RW.
Finally, here's an Uru synopsis:
You begin in the Desert.
After touching seven Journey Cloths, you are given access to a linking book, which takes you to Relto (Island in the Clouds). Relto is your refuge and starting point between game sessions.
To solve Uru, you must transfer pillars from Teledahn (Mushroom Age), Gahreesen (Fortresses Age), Kadish Tolesa (Mechanical Age) and Eder Gira/Eder Kemo (Volcano and Garden Ages) from the Bahro (Pillar Cave) to Relto.
When all four pillars reside in Relto, you transfer them back to the Bahro and return to the Desert to solve its remaining puzzles.
Customer Review: A step down for the series
Summary: 3 Stars
Myst was great, Riven was insanely hard but genius, and Exile was spectacular, with perfect difficulty and great puzzles...with Uru, however, the series has gone slightly awry. The idea of an avatar isn't entirely terrible, but the ideas of kicking things into position and having to walk and jump accurately to progress are. As for the first one, just let us have an inventory, and have a set position for the items when we figure out where to put them back down! The soccer game that pervades Uru is absurd. And the need for nimble fingers has no place in the Myst franchise; if we want to test our ability to run and jump skillfully, we'll go play a platformer. Give us the ability to run and jump, sure, but don't make us master it in order to win the game.A few of the puzzles in Uru, in my view, require a mental leap outside of the realm of logic, but others may disagree. In any case, I eagerly anticipate Myst IV: Revelation, and hope it will be less like this subchapter and more like Exile.
Customer Review: Bravo!
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading some of the reviews, one thing is very obvious... people are totally missing the point of this game.Uru is an amazing story, one that you get to learn as you explore an even more amazing world. The point is not to "win" or "beat the game" - it's to find out more about the D'ni people, and most importantly - where they went. ( Maybe, that's why there are so many notebooks laying around?? Just maybe? ) I played Myst (though never played Riven nor Exile )and I found Uru far more user-friendly then the first Myst released.
I personally, LOVE this game - and am biting my nails just waiting for the next expansion. It truly is a story to live - one that will keep you guessing around every corner.
Yes, you have to use your noggin, but again - that's the point. This is not an "I win" game - it's an evolving world that you get to play a part in. A world done beautifully and one that you will find yourself happily lost in for days.
Two thumbs up, in my opinion.
Customer Review: Not good
Summary: 1 Stars
This game is not user friendly. It is not like the other Myst games. I can't even get a start on the game. It won't save when you want to quit. Whe you do quit and come back to the game, it starts from the beginning again. The mouse curser is all over the screen and hard to control. I guess you have have to play it all in one day. The URU website is complicated and offers no help at all. I wasted my money on this game for which I can't play. I played the other Myst games with none of this type of trouble.