Obduction - game review

Obduction is a game I have been waiting for years to come out. made by Cyan, the same people who gave us the original Myst games, games I love to this day and replay now and then, I was really looking forward to it and playing a game with no violence and allowed me to explore a place at my own pace.

So the game finally has arrived and it's pretty wonderful. While some people complain about stuttering or bugs I haven't really experienced much of that, or maybe I haven't experienced more of of it than I see with most games I play.

Visually and storewide it doesn't disappoint and was well worth the wait. The renderings and landscapes are breathtaking, artistic and beg to be explored. The interactions with the residents of the world are limited mostly to video clips which is fine, though I know some people wished there would be more character interaction - it's not something I want from a Myst-like game.

Speaking of Myst-like like. this game does not loo like the games from the series or follow the plot or have any thematic connection to them. It is very much it's own thing and I applaud the makers for that. Where it resembles that previous franchise is in the gameplay and feeling of the environments. Like those past  project, Obduction has many puzzles to solves and nooks and crannies to explore but follows it's own rules and aesthetics.

To be 100% honest, I am reviewing this game without finishing playing it. The reason why is the one thing I find wrong with this new adventure. Some of the puzzles involve math, literally they do and that's not my strong point, but you can find solutions online and hints and get past them easy enough and continue to explore. I have reached one area, the "maze" which embodies the worst tendencies that Cyan games puts into some of it's puzzles. It's pretty much impossible to solve even with cheating, especially if you missed a step. If you do manage to figure it out, it involves so much back tracking and repetitive action that's it is just a total gamer killer in terms of enjoyment.

So I am now re-starting the game from the beginning, following a guide to get past the log-jam of the "maze" so I can actually finish the game. Disappointing to be sure but I would still say on balance it's well worth getting and playing. I am not unhappy with my purchase, just this one part of it that really goes too far in terms of difficulty. I am sure there are those that find this sort of thing the reason to play, but I am just as sure that most of Cyan's fans are more like me, liking the puzzles but loving the exploration more.

I know there are two endings and I hope they are better than the tow endings of Quern I recently finished, where both basically took you to the same place. I also hope that, like the original Myst, I can walk around and see some thing is might have missed after the game is over.

UPDATE:
I am finally out of the maze! The guide I used wasn't totally clear but I managed to follow it enough to get it set up so the maze would take me to all the locations and i went beyond that, but not to the end of the game - yet. I also discovered in a comment that ALL the bridges can be activated using the the same code which saved a lot of time trying to match each bridge to a different code.