Riven

Cyan - 1997 - PC/Saturn/PS1/Mobile

Anyone else remember this game? Riven was the sequel to the massively popular game Myst which launched in 1993. It was famously one of the first games to be released on a CD and helped to popularize the CD-ROM drive. I can't even believe Myst is more than 20 years old now. I can still remember playing Myst on Windows 3.1 and how frustratingly often it used to crash. Then Riven was released in 1997 and came on 5 CDs. You had to annoyingly keep swapping the CDs out as you explored different parts of the island. There's a lot of stuff like this about Riven that requires the player to have a lot of patience. Patience that I had as a kid, but has long since left me as an adult. It's kind of a shame because I'm pretty sure that if I played a game like Riven today, I'd push it aside after 15 minutes or so and move on to something else. While there are some technical limitations and some game mechanics in Riven that have not aged well over the years, there's also a lot this game does really smartly. It's a "slow burn" type of game. If you give Riven your time and patience, it will reward you with some amazingly clever puzzles and an unusual and immersive fantasy story. 

For those not familiar with the Myst games, they are point & click style adventure games. But not quite in the same way as the old King's Quest or Monkey Island games. They're no puzzles that involve combining items together through some absurd logic that allows you to progress further or whatever. In Riven, you're gated only by how much you've explored and how deep your understanding is about the island and its inhabitants. It's a game that does a beautiful job of communicating a complex story with few words and minimal cutscenes. The only cutscene you're given for quite a while is the game's initial opening cutscene, which really gives you more questions than answers. During this cryptic scene, a man teleports you to an island called Riven after giving you nothing but two books. You arrive in a jail cell on Riven where one of the books you were given is promptly stolen by a man who does not speak your language. The thief is then quickly killed by another mysterious person who sets you free, but not before taking the stolen book for himself. You're then free to explore the island and unravel the mystery of Riven. An intriguing open, no? What's in that book that's worth killing for? And who are these people who are so desperate to get it?

Riven's story is told through exploring the island, discovering its secrets and understanding the meaning and purpose behind them. Riven doesn't tell its story through dialogue or cutscenes as in most games. When you do watch a cutscene in the game, it usually only serves to confirm what you've figured out about the island already. It's never directly or clearly communicated to you what any of the character's motivations are or even why you were sent to the island in the first place. It's really up to the player to discover and understand the deep story in Riven for themselves, and this may have been the most satisfying part of the game for me. I think the best way to go about doing this is to always ask the question "Why?" when something doesn't make sense. A lot of the fun in this game is trying to form the answers to all of the questions the game gives based on what you know about the island so far. The developers did a fantastic job of being very deliberate with their world design. Nothing is there by accident or coincidence, nearly every object or structure in the game is meant to communicate something important to you. As you explore Riven, you'll encounter many mysterious machines and contraptions. Ask "What do they do?". "Who would have put them here?". If you think on these questions, eventually the details of the story will come in to focus.

The puzzles in Riven are given to you in a similar fashion as the story. The objective or elements of the puzzle aren't given to you explicitly, but rather communicated to you subtly through the environment and world design. It's definitely a game where you have to keep a sheet or two of handwritten notes while you're playing, which is something not many games do anymore. Some of the puzzles in Riven are downright brilliant. There's one amazing puzzle in particular where I can remember feeling so impressed with myself after I had figured it out. The solutions to these puzzles are really so satisfying when you finally figure them out. I'd challenge you to play through this game without looking any of them up.

Riven is not without its faults though and some of them are unfortunately due to this game's age. The game is first person, but it's not full 3D. It's essentially a bunch of still images that have been linked together. This, to me, really makes the game feel aged. A full 3D engine would do this game a lot of good. The game's pace is also incredibly slow and it can be very frustrating to be stuck in one place for a while and feel like you're not progressing. This will likely happen a lot in Riven which can be discouraging to players if they don't have a deep well of patience. There are certain puzzles in the game where Riven may have been to clever for its own good. The puzzle solutions are fair, but they're hidden so deeply in the game's world that they're not easily discovered without a very keen eye and extremely sharp mind.

Summary:
If you've got the time and patience and love puzzle games, mysteries or unusual stories, Riven would probably be a good fit for you. Just keep in mind that this game will probably show its age and you may also get stuck frequently while playing it. If you've never played a game in the Myst series and are curious, Riven is a great place to start. It's a refinement and improvement on everything that the first game was. While subsequent games in the series improved their audiovisual fidelity, they never quite recaptured the sublime story or brilliant puzzles that made Riven a great game. Also steer clear of Myst 5. That game is terrible. Rand Miller, one of the lead creative minds behind Myst and Riven recently launched a successful kickstarter for his new game, Obduction. It sounds like Obduction will play similarly to Riven and I'd love to try another game like this to see if I still have the patience for it. I'll be interested to monitor the development of Obduction and hopefully play it soon.

Ether One

White Paper Games - 2014 - PC

The premise alone for Ether One probably would have been enough to get me interested in playing this game, not to mention that it had mostly positive(ish) reviews upon its launch earlier this year. Gameplay wise, it's kind of one is one part interactive story and one part puzzle game. It's like if Gone Home had a baby with the old school adventure/puzzle games like Myst. In Ether One, you'll be playing the role of "The Restorer". You're contracted to help a medical researcher treat a patient with dementia by entering the patient's mind Inception style and then finding and restoring the patient's lost or broken memories. Really interesting premise, right? Unfortunately, most of what's typed below are a lot of the faults I found with the game. There's a lot of good stuff to be found with Ether One too, but I chose to focus mostly on the things I thought could be improved to make a more complete experience. I want to submit some constructive criticism because I know that Ether One is the type of game that I usually like, but there were a few problems in the way of making my experience truly awesome

Like Gone Home before it, the story of Ether One is told via voiceovers that occasionally kick in and give you narrative details when you're standing near or looking at something of importance. You'll be exploring a deserted island as it exists in your patient's memory and discovering your patient's life history by exploring this small island. The primary voice you hear is that of the lead researcher of the project you're assigned to. She chimes in now and again to give you your objectives and bark out orders on how you're to carry them out. Her character reminded me a little bit of GLaDOS from Portal. She serves to guide the player and move the game along, but her motivations seem questionable. You don't feel like you can completely trust her. The game seemed content to keep this character sort of ambivalent all the way up until the end of the story. Actually, I found a lot of the story's details to be a little vague and I'm not sure if this was intentional or poor narrative execution.

Adding to the confusion and the vagueness of this story is the other female character's voiceover who just starts talking to you out of nowhere. For the longest time, I thought I had missed some important cutscene where the game delivered a bunch of narrative exposition and this other voice was introduced, but nope. For most of the game, you're not sure who this voice is supposed to be or what the relevance is of the details she provides are. To me, this sort of ambiguity wasn't even interestingly vague or mysteriously vague. It was more confusingly and annoyingly vague. A lot of what either of the two voices talk about seemed incohesive and irrelevant to the rest of the story. Because of these problems, it took Ether One quite a while to grab me and for the game to really click with me. There's some really well executed scenes about halfway through the game that pulled me in and there's also an interesting twist at the end, but unfortunately you'll have to tough it out while the game stumbles through the confusing introduction of the setting and characters.

The focus of the gameplay in Ether One is on exploration. You need to find a certain number of red ribbons in each area before being allowed to proceed to the next one. The game also includes some puzzles, but interestingly, nearly all of the puzzle sections in Ether One are completely optional. Since they're not required, solving these puzzles serves only to give you an extra bit of narrative about whichever area you're in. I think it's fortunate that the designers made these optional, because the puzzles I attempted to solve were so frustratingly poorly communicated. I had absolutely no idea what the game wanted me to do with some of these puzzles. Sometimes I wasn't even sure if what I was looking at was supposed to be a puzzle at all. I happened to accidentally solve one of the puzzles, and I wasn't even really sure what I had done to complete it. A lot of them involve placing the correct items gathered from various places around the island, but you can only carry one item at a time for some odd reason. It felt like the game designers were hacking around the game engine rather than coding a decent inventory system. It was a pretty unintuitive mess. Mercifully, these are indeed optional. Aside from the puzzles, the rest of the gameplay was sort of unremarkable and uninteresting. If you're playing Ether One, you're doing it for the story, nothing else. But just like its story, I felt that there was something missing from Ether One's gameplay that could have really made this game special

Summary:
Despite all of my ranting above, I still liked Ether One. I wanted to like this game more than I actually did, but there was some bungled narrative and some really poor execution in gameplay that I just couldn't get over. It's also another pretty short game. That is, unless you try to figure out some of those crazy puzzles. That might pad the game a bit, but I'd advise against it. Skipping nearly all of the puzzles, I was able to knock this game out in about 3 hours. The subject matter in this game is really interesting to me and there are a few short sequences in where Ether One really shines. However most of the rest of the game is unfortunately kind of dull, incoherent or overly vague. Artsy folks who like the "open to interpretation" kind of story may dig this, but I found too many details were missing and my interest wasn't adequately captured at the game's opening. I really still did enjoy playing through this game though. Just not as much as I hoped I would.

Proteus

Ed Key, David Kanaga - 2013 - PC/PS3/Vita

This week, I played through Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and also the XCOM expansion, Enemy Within. Both are fantastic games, and I'd highly recommend either of them, but Aria of Sorrow is great for the exact same reason Symphony of the Night is great and Enemy within is great for the exact same reason XCOM: Enemy Unknown is great. I considered writing a more fleshed out review for XCOM since I did that one so long ago, but Enemy Within is essentially the same game as Enemy Unknown and I don't want to review the same game twice. Also Aria of Sorrow is pretty much the exact same game as Symphony of the Night, they just changed some of the character names and the castle is laid out differently. Just know that these games are totally fantastic and worth checking out. However this week, I think I'd like to talk about a little indie game I picked up for free on PlayStation Plus called Proteus.

I'm actually not even sure if I should be writing about Proteus on this blog, only because I'm not sure if Proteus qualifies as a game. This really raised the question of "What is a game?" for me even more than Journey did. At least with Journey, there was a definite end to the game. While the goal of the game wasn't directly stated, it was implied that you were progressing towards something by the various scenes and events in Journey. But Proteus has no end, no goals, no progress, no events or story of any kind. Now I'm not sure how you exactly define what a game is, or even if it matters whether or not Proteus is one, but for the sake of not being misleading, you might want to consider Proteus as an "audiovisual experience" rather than a game.

Proteus was created by just two dudes, Ed Key and David Kanaga. Development started in 2008 when David had the vision of making a unconventional and completely non-violent video game. Proteus was finally released last year and David certainly realized his vision. It's a very unusual game and there's certainly no violence. You begin the game standing offshore while staring at a very pixelated island. As you move toward the island, you'll realize that nearly everything on the island makes some sort of unusual synthesized sounds that all sort of meld together to make the game's soundtrack. The game will sound different depending on where you are on the island and what you're standing next to. For instance, in a forest, you'll hear the electronic purrs of all of the pixelated trees. Or on top of a tall mountain, the soundtrack may dim a bit and you'll hear only the quiet sound of the wind blowing. It's another game that you can just watch a YouTube video of and probably get the gist of it. Everything is procedurally generated, so the island is different each time, and everything is very pixelated and musical. It kind of feels like something that would belong at one of those "games of tomorrow" places at Disney World.

I hate to sound like I'm picking on the little guys, but Proteus is totally not my kind of game. The two things I love to look for in games are either a strong gameplay hook or excellent narrative. Most of my favorite games combine both of these elements to make a fun game that also tells an interesting story. Proteus has neither of these elements. There's absolutely no story, and there's really no gameplay either, at least not in the traditional sense of that word. I really did try to give Proteus a chance though, I tried to explore the island with no expectations and just enjoy the whimsical electronic music. But I just couldn't get into it. Sorry, Proteus.

Summary:
Proteus offers a very unusual and non-violent audiovisual experience. If that sentence sounded interesting to you, maybe Proteus will be your game. It certainly wasn't mine, but that's okay. If you're like me and you know that Proteus won't be your thing, Aria of Sorrow and/or XCOM: Enemy Unknown are excellently designed games that are boatloads of fun. Both are worth a look if you like Metroidvania style games or turn based strategy games.

A Story About My Uncle

Gone North Games - 2014 - PC

A Story About My Uncle is the first game from Gone North Games, a small indie studio based in Sweeden. According to their website, Gone North Games was founded by 9 students who have a passion for making games. Since it's advertised all over their website and apparently important to the developers, I'll repeat it here - A Story About My Uncle is a completely non-violent video game. This isn't really an entirely novel concept for a game, but it is unusual I suppose. For better or worse, most games do rely on some sort of violent combat as their main game mechanic. I do think it's cool that games like Gone Home or To The Moon are using video games purely as a story telling medium. But unfortunately, A Story About My Uncle doesn't tell a very interesting story. It is a pretty fun platformer though which is really what this game stands on

The game begins as you, the narrator, are reading your daughter a bedtime story. The entire rest of the game is played out as a flashback as the narrator recounts how he, as a boy, used to play with his uncle at his uncle's house. One day, the narrator's uncle went missing and you soon find out that he was transported to a distant magical world through some transporter device that the narrator's uncle invented. The game is a little vague on the details of how exactly this transporter was invented or how it works, but the narrator of course uses it to travel to this other world in search of his uncle. That's pretty much all the exposition you get. I mean that's it for the rest of the game. You meet some other characters and go to new locations, but the story never really progresses at all. You're just searching for your uncle the whole game. That's it. And then (spoiler alert) the game just kind of ends abruptly at a certain point and the credits roll. Nothing is really resolved and nothing really changes, just "The End". It was very anti-climactic and disappointing. It almost seemed rushed, like they might have been trying to go somewhere with the story, but had to cut a lot of it to meet deadlines or something like that. In any case, I somewhat ironically found the story in A Story About My Uncle to be underdeveloped and uninteresting.

Near the beginning of the game, the narrator discovers some magical super-bouncy boots and some magical grappling tether thing which serve as the game's platforming mechanics. I can't remember what the game actually called the boots and grapple device and I'm too lazy to look it up, but these definitely are what make this game fun and interesting. The boots allow you to jump crazy high and crazy far and the tether allows you to pull yourself closer towards certain parts of the terrain. Most of the terrain in the game is made up of small chunks of floating rock as shown in the cover art above, so the platforming can be kind of challenging in certain areas. Quick props to the graphic artists for this game, I found a lot of the floating terrain and world design to be really interesting from an artistic point of view. Very cool and imaginative artwork.

I prefer to play games laying down in my couch with a controller as opposed to sitting forward with a mouse and keyboard, even while playing PC games. So I'm not sure if it was just because I was playing with a controller, but there were some parts of this game that were really tricky to pull off. And I'm usually quite good at platformers. And that's fine, I enjoy a good challenge, but the difficulty curve with this game was a little wonky. There was one particular section near the end of the game that was insanely difficult, it probably took me 30-40 attempts to finally do it right. And then the rest of the game was mind-numbingly easy. My only other complaint, from a gameplay perspective, was with the level design. It was quite often not very clear where the game wanted me to go next, especially in the later levels where the terrain is separated by great distances. I had to jump around and try to grapple to things trail-and-error style until I finally found something that worked. The difficulty curve is forgivable, but in a linear platformer like this I feel like the player should always have a pretty good idea of where the game wants them to go next.

Summary:
It is definitely a flawed game, but if you like 3D platformers, you could do worse than A Story About My Uncle. It's got some really cool art design and fun platforming, but it has some design issues and the actual story might as well not even exist. It was also kind of short, I finished it in about 5 hours, but I found that length to be appropriate. All in all, not too bad for a small team making their first game. And as its developers insist, it's completely non-violent, if that's a selling point for you.