Posted By: mike_bn
Extremely disappointed about URU. Please provide reasons to continue playing - 05/08/21 08:45 AM
Hi all,
so my typical disclaimer first: I love cyan, I love myst-games and this is probably the reason why I am so disappointed about URU. Actually I would even go so far to say - and I would never have expected to say that about a cyan game - that I actually hate the game so far (after having played it around 4 hours). Some of the design choices I feel are so terrible for a myst game that it blows my mind how they could choose to keep those features.
What do I mean by that?
1) The insane amount of running and jumping. If I had wanted to play a jump and run game, I would have installed a C64 emulator and revived my C64 past. It is not that I am bad at these things. Actually , my reflexes are really, really good. So, I am not frustrated because I am bad at that. But what were they thinking integrating this into a MYST game??? Myst games are all about quiet, slow, careful exploration of the great worlds/ages you find yourself be transported to. Patiently walking around, absorbing the atmosphere, looking for clues, enjoying the nice graphics. And now I have to jump around on stones, piles of trash which in some places are so badly designed that I cannot even tell whether I am supposed to succeed to jump to a specific spot or not? How I am supposed to immerse myself in an age if I constantly struggle to get to some place or fall down because I barely missed my jump destination or because it is simply not possible to jump to the location I aimed at? That is just bad and most importantly, a totally contradiction to a core characteristic of myst games, imo.
2) Some places are even worse: So after reaching this Relto(?) world, I used a book on the top left corner of a shelve to visit another age. After lots of jumping and running, I encountered
some big metal/stone ring which rotates and it becomes clear that this ring has a hole and you have to slip through the hole to get to the other side of the ring. I spend ONE hour, only succeeding once by accident. ONE freaking hour running and jumping against a wall from different angles, it just didn't work. That is just stupid. How could this possibly pass beta testing.? My gaming buddy had the same problem, he was just more lucky and succeeded a bit earlier (without knowing why). You get not hint whatsoever whether you choose the wrong angle, whether you just have to run, or jump at the right moment. And if you miss the hole you have to wait one minute until the hole appears again. I checked the walkthrough and I could not believe what I read there. First off, I had not missed anything, so there is no clue how to get through rather than having luck, but the walkthrough also advised to use ego-view, it would not work well in t3rd-person view (or vice-versa I forgot). Sorry but that is just terrible technical design. How should a player know this? From now on, when I don't succeed somewhere with jumping and running, do I have to try everything in both game modes?
3) Lack of puzzles. So far, I am just running and jumping around, trying to find these cloths. Feels like a mixture of a walking/jumping-simulator and a hidden objects game, not like a myst game. I googled for reviews in the hope of finding something which would motivate me to continue and I would like to cite a section of the adventuregamers review, which perfectly described the way I felt:
'However, adventure purists may come away feeling that this primary component of URU isn’t “puzzling” at all. The fact that two of the Ages focus primarily on dexterity tests of running and jumping to obtain the elusive cloths just added to my frustration and sense that I wasn’t playing a Myst game or even an adventure game at all. '
To be fair, the author mentions later ages are more about puzzling and have some nice puzzles, but even 1, let alone 2 dexterity ages simply is a bad decision, in my opinion. I respect the goal of a company to not re-create the same game over and over again and try to come up with new things and add new elements/mechanics. But it needs to fit to the key characteristics which made the original game great. What do I have to expect next? Will I find a gun so that I have to shoot around in doom-style?
4) The save system. Maybe this is not as bad as I think it is, I have not played the game long enough. But there is a reason why 95% of all games let you save the game exactly at the place where you are when you want/must stop playing. It has proven to be a good design concept. When I can play again, I want to continue exactly where I stopped. Here - if I understand it correctly - your start location depends on the last cloth you touched? Why? What value does this provide? Why is this a good design decision? I don't see the point.
5) My gaming buddy - also disappointed - but more patient than I am, continued playing, even though he agreed with my points. He stopped playing when he encountered a book with 46 pages to read. Forty-Six! In general, I don't mind finding and reading books here and there in an adventure games. It is a good thing to draw the player into the story. But 46 pages? That is too much for my taste. If I had wanted to read a book, I would have gone to my local library.
6) Some reviews and posts imply that there are even more difficult places to come as far as jumping/running and pushing objects with your body are concerned. If I find it bad already, this does not incline me at all to continue.
I am sorry to say it, but so far I could not find anything i liked about URU, Not to mention that I haven't found one single puzzle so far. Then again, I am aware that many people like URU, so this post is not about just trashing the game, even though I made this long list of points I did not like. Please explain to me why you like this game and why I should give this game another shot and continue playing. Did I stop to early? Does it get so unbelievably great that it makes up for the points I criticized? There must be a reason why Uru has a solid fan base, and I would like to understand why.
so my typical disclaimer first: I love cyan, I love myst-games and this is probably the reason why I am so disappointed about URU. Actually I would even go so far to say - and I would never have expected to say that about a cyan game - that I actually hate the game so far (after having played it around 4 hours). Some of the design choices I feel are so terrible for a myst game that it blows my mind how they could choose to keep those features.
What do I mean by that?
1) The insane amount of running and jumping. If I had wanted to play a jump and run game, I would have installed a C64 emulator and revived my C64 past. It is not that I am bad at these things. Actually , my reflexes are really, really good. So, I am not frustrated because I am bad at that. But what were they thinking integrating this into a MYST game??? Myst games are all about quiet, slow, careful exploration of the great worlds/ages you find yourself be transported to. Patiently walking around, absorbing the atmosphere, looking for clues, enjoying the nice graphics. And now I have to jump around on stones, piles of trash which in some places are so badly designed that I cannot even tell whether I am supposed to succeed to jump to a specific spot or not? How I am supposed to immerse myself in an age if I constantly struggle to get to some place or fall down because I barely missed my jump destination or because it is simply not possible to jump to the location I aimed at? That is just bad and most importantly, a totally contradiction to a core characteristic of myst games, imo.
2) Some places are even worse: So after reaching this Relto(?) world, I used a book on the top left corner of a shelve to visit another age. After lots of jumping and running, I encountered
some big metal/stone ring which rotates and it becomes clear that this ring has a hole and you have to slip through the hole to get to the other side of the ring. I spend ONE hour, only succeeding once by accident. ONE freaking hour running and jumping against a wall from different angles, it just didn't work. That is just stupid. How could this possibly pass beta testing.? My gaming buddy had the same problem, he was just more lucky and succeeded a bit earlier (without knowing why). You get not hint whatsoever whether you choose the wrong angle, whether you just have to run, or jump at the right moment. And if you miss the hole you have to wait one minute until the hole appears again. I checked the walkthrough and I could not believe what I read there. First off, I had not missed anything, so there is no clue how to get through rather than having luck, but the walkthrough also advised to use ego-view, it would not work well in t3rd-person view (or vice-versa I forgot). Sorry but that is just terrible technical design. How should a player know this? From now on, when I don't succeed somewhere with jumping and running, do I have to try everything in both game modes?
3) Lack of puzzles. So far, I am just running and jumping around, trying to find these cloths. Feels like a mixture of a walking/jumping-simulator and a hidden objects game, not like a myst game. I googled for reviews in the hope of finding something which would motivate me to continue and I would like to cite a section of the adventuregamers review, which perfectly described the way I felt:
'However, adventure purists may come away feeling that this primary component of URU isn’t “puzzling” at all. The fact that two of the Ages focus primarily on dexterity tests of running and jumping to obtain the elusive cloths just added to my frustration and sense that I wasn’t playing a Myst game or even an adventure game at all. '
To be fair, the author mentions later ages are more about puzzling and have some nice puzzles, but even 1, let alone 2 dexterity ages simply is a bad decision, in my opinion. I respect the goal of a company to not re-create the same game over and over again and try to come up with new things and add new elements/mechanics. But it needs to fit to the key characteristics which made the original game great. What do I have to expect next? Will I find a gun so that I have to shoot around in doom-style?
4) The save system. Maybe this is not as bad as I think it is, I have not played the game long enough. But there is a reason why 95% of all games let you save the game exactly at the place where you are when you want/must stop playing. It has proven to be a good design concept. When I can play again, I want to continue exactly where I stopped. Here - if I understand it correctly - your start location depends on the last cloth you touched? Why? What value does this provide? Why is this a good design decision? I don't see the point.
5) My gaming buddy - also disappointed - but more patient than I am, continued playing, even though he agreed with my points. He stopped playing when he encountered a book with 46 pages to read. Forty-Six! In general, I don't mind finding and reading books here and there in an adventure games. It is a good thing to draw the player into the story. But 46 pages? That is too much for my taste. If I had wanted to read a book, I would have gone to my local library.
6) Some reviews and posts imply that there are even more difficult places to come as far as jumping/running and pushing objects with your body are concerned. If I find it bad already, this does not incline me at all to continue.
I am sorry to say it, but so far I could not find anything i liked about URU, Not to mention that I haven't found one single puzzle so far. Then again, I am aware that many people like URU, so this post is not about just trashing the game, even though I made this long list of points I did not like. Please explain to me why you like this game and why I should give this game another shot and continue playing. Did I stop to early? Does it get so unbelievably great that it makes up for the points I criticized? There must be a reason why Uru has a solid fan base, and I would like to understand why.