Kickstarter’s fingerprints do not smudge the glass in Obduction as much as in some other games.
I think the conceit is that I can hear the other character, but he can’t hear me, but this could be made a little clearer. This is not how a real conversation would go! But that’s video games for you. Someone is barking orders at me, but I, otherwise supposedly a normal person, can’t speak back or interact. However, there’s a sort of awkwardness too, in that for part of the game I’m supposedly interacting with a live person, but I’m a mute protagonist. It’s fun to see live action FMV coming back. I thought this was a remarkably oldschool touch. What human contact one does have is often through recorded live video. The game’s ambient soundtrack adds to the weight of new discoveries, as well: dramatic and moving without being too obtrusive.Īlso like in Myst, the worlds of Obduction are mostly solitary experiences, with very little human contact. The world design has an air of mystery and beautiful lighting effects. The first time I found a transition point to a new world was a breathtaking moment I don’t want to ruin for you by over-explaining. I say “worlds”: there’s more than one zone in this game, much like in Myst, but I don’t want to go into too many details. Even if walking through them hurt a little at times, I put up with the pain because the worlds in the game are so beautiful and arresting. The high end graphics actually make a big difference. In spite of these major problems, I was still determined to play this one to the end. The game is just that heavy on puzzle solving. While getting to the point where I was stuck initially had taken me ten hours of exploration, actually returning to that same spot took only about half an hour. I went through the stages of grief here: first hoping that there would be some way to continue after all, then getting pissed off at the developers, then, going to the game’s Reddit looking for answers, feeling despair, and at last resigning myself to retrace my previous steps at high speed to get back to roughly where I left off. There was a small comfort.
#Myst obduction Patch
Halfway through my experience, a new patch introduced a show-stopping bug that forced me to start the game all the way over from the beginning.
#Myst obduction free
Ultimately, though, the point-and-click mode felt kind of limited, and I sucked it up and switched back to free roam. It basically turns the game from a game where I amble around this world to one where I teleport around in little bursts, like Nightcrawler. I mitigated this problem by switching the game to “point and click/instant” mode, which limits the camera shake. I understand the choice to turn off the crosshair for immersion reasons, but, developers: I need the crosshair. This is disappointing because if there was an “always-on crosshair” option in the menus, which to me seems like a pretty easy thing to add, I’d have had an easier time getting into the game. Obduction already has a crosshair, which activates when I need to look around to click on something, but the crosshair disappears when I’m in motion. I have a motion sickness issue, which I have discussed previously, and it’s at its worst when I get into a first-person game that has no gun in it.
#Myst obduction Pc
It has Oculus Rift support as well, so this is something truly special, though I played the game mostly on my PC monitor.Įven without Rift, the game … well, it makes me sick to my stomach.
Obduction is an Unreal engine game, and it uses high end graphics to make its alien worlds seem real. I tried playing it on my laptop at first, hoping for something quiet I could do on the plane, but the game asked more of my hardware than I realized it would and made that idea impractical. My first impression of Obduction involved realizing that it took a much higher end PC than I had anticipated. I’m also going to try to avoid all but the barest of spoilers, though there may be some, depending on your definition of a spoiler.
This may look like a negative review in the text as a result, but I’m going to cap it with a thumbs-up, just so you’re aware. On the other hand, it’s very easy to talk about the things that I didn’t love.
But it’s hard to talk about why I loved it without spoiling the experience. I hate to boast, but I have yet to back a total dud on Kickstarter.
#Myst obduction series
When I saw that a spiritual successor to this series was put up on Kickstarter, I backed, so that I would be sure to have the game when it released. I even played through the sequel, Riven, as a kid, though I can’t say I did it without some help. I was one of those people who bought The Book of Atrus in hardcover. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of the series. Myst, the solitary, quiet adventure game that was packed with so many PCs in the 90s, is a divisive game.