|
|
|| Adventure Links || Archives || Articles || Independent Developers || Interviews || JA Forum ||
|| JA Staff/Contacts || The JAVE || Letters || Reviews || Search || Upcoming Releases || Walkthroughs ||
|| What's New / Home || Play Games! ||
| Over 1 Million Visitors a Month! |
|
To top more on that, there are many places I feel that I was left without a purpose except to find the seven Journeys. With one Age especially, I felt as if I had hit a roadblock with no idea where to go or what to pursue next. I had completed all the puzzles presented to me thus far and found four of the Journeys, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. This may be the only critical drawback to the storyline of Uru. Because these Ages are so massive in scope, your story would sometimes get lost under all the technicality and richness of the history. I would become so wrapped up in the history of a place that I would lose touch with my real mission to pursue on and thus, have no clue what to do next. All the machines had been fixed, all the power had been put back on and all the rooms had been accessed . . . so where are the other three Journeys? So with Uru, your mission comes threefold: 1. To unlock the mysteries of each Age Yeesha presents to you 2. To find all seven Journeys in each of the Ages 3. To keep sight of your goal and eventually make your way to D’ni while getting around the red tape of the DRC.
Get out your wallets all my adventuring friends While not at the state of the art of hardware, Uru requires some heavy end technology if you want to fully experience it. First, get a soundcard with EAX technology, then a set of surround sound speakers to match it. Throw in at least a later P3 or Athlon processor, plenty of RAM, and video card from the last year or so, and you might just make the minimum technical qualifications for Uru. To fully experience the live portion, be prepared to shell out the $35 plus a month for broadband. I know that adventurers aren’t use to having to deal with higher end hardware and we all spend our money on games instead of new peripherals, but consider this a direct order: if you want to experience all Uru has to offer, get thee to a CompUSA IMMEDIATELY!!! I don’t want to address bugs in this article because I played Uru off of a pre-release version, so I’m sure anything major found in my version will have been cleaned up before shipping. When I get my final release copy, I’ll tack on an addendum about bugs if there are any. Knowing Cyan and how thorough they are, I don’t expect to see many, if at all. Word of advice though: I know some games recommend that you pause or shut off any virus software that might be running while you play the game. Leave it on with Uru. My computer likes to spontaneously reboot if I pause McAffee before going into the game. “The ending can never truly be written.”
Rand also adds that his greatest concern is “that people won't understand what it is. Since it doesn't fit neatly into existing gaming categories, it might take some time for people to begin to understand what Uru is.” And he is exactly right. Uru is neither a pure adventure, nor a pure RPG in the sense of Final Fantasy or Warcraft. It is an astonishing synthesis of the two, taking the story and puzzle elements of the adventure and the graphic flexibility of the RPG. Adding in a dash of online gaming, and Cyan might just have created a game that will appeal to gamers from all genres. This could be the first true blockbuster, cross-genre game. Uru is set to become one of the most compellingly rich and complex worlds ever created. With the game arriving in stand alone and online formats, Cyan is set to hit the gaming world with the most powerful one-two punch its seen since the original release of Myst. Will it catch on as Rand so hopes it does? Only time will tell . . . but God I hope so! Final Grade: A (what else did you expect?) If you enjoyed Uru and my lovely review of the game, may I recommend the following for your edification: Read:
All the Myst novels. If you haven’t read them yet,
then shame on you. (Carla Melloni’s wonderful article that gives some great perspective on the origins of Uru can be found here.) Many thanks to the great people at Ubisoft and Cyan Worlds for letting me get an early peek at Uru, to Katie Postma for her support, and to Randy Sluganski for letting this Myst fanatic get her dream assignment. System Requirements:
|
|
|