Copyright © 1997 Balmoral Software (http://www.balmoralsoftware.com). Portions copyright © 1997 Cyan Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, redistribution or conversion is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Balmoral Software. Contents subject to change! For the latest information, see http://www.balmoralsoftware.com.
Myst was something new and different. Riven is not. Naturally, Cyan had a hard act to follow, but after all the advance hype in the form of cute Java applets on their web sites, mass e-mailings, media spotlights and confusion about the game's release date, the reality of playing Riven is a major disappointment.
Riven simply takes itself too seriously. The game is sterile, humorless and lacks any real human element. Even just the addition of a sidekick of some sort would have been a welcome relief in playing the game. Riven's complete lack of humor is especially obvious when compared to contemporary releases such as Zork Grand Inquisitor.
The storyline is rather convoluted and hard to follow without benefit of additional material in the series of Myst books also marketed by Cyan. In the backstory about "Atrus" and "Aitrus", why not just make the man his own grandfather and be done with it? :) In a well-advertised change from the Myst formula, Riven includes FMV sequences of actors, but the grainy, interlaced QuickTime clips are few and far between and offer no significant interaction with the player. In fact, there seems to be little point to finishing Riven other than the solution of a seemingly-endless sequence of mechanical puzzles, one leading to another. The overall goal of Riven has something to do with saving someone else's wife, but there is little suspense to keep the player going and practically no plot contrivances to advance the story.
Riven's graphics are quite as good as expected, especially when showing animated water effects, but their presentation in a dated slideshow format is a big letdown. It's hard to accept that a three-year-old game engine was retained virtually unchanged just to avoid alienating die-hard Myst fans. The 360-degree movement that is becoming the norm in the adventure game genre is sorely missing from Riven. And without an active cursor such as is used in Zork Grand Inquisitor, too much time is required to be spent pixel searching with the mouse. There are a few great roller-coaster sequences in Riven, but that doesn't make a game. Riven would have been a better product if less time had been spent on rendering over-detailed background images and more on improving playability.
In an unsatisfactory deviation from Myst's premise of wildly-different "Ages", Riven consists almost entirely of separate islands in the same geographic vicinity. Since the game uses five CD-ROM's, you'll find you're often doing the "CD shuffle" as you move about the Riven world. Geographically, the game is a complete ripoff of LucasArts' The Dig, right down to the underground/underwater trams linking the islands. Riven's weather is always the same, monotonous partly-cloudy skies without even the occasional winds that were so enjoyable in Myst. While the initial "explorability" of Riven seems to be an improvement over Myst, there are still a lot of areas that stay inexplicably inaccessible (such as the village of spherical houses).
It would have been nice to have a wider variety of puzzles in Riven - more along the lines of what was found in Myst. Instead, most of Riven's puzzles are either mechanical or based on hidden things, with a tiresome repetition of the same five-element theme. Released simultaneously with Riven is an overpriced hint book from Brady Games, so your best bet for getting help with a puzzle would be to find hints on the web.
Riven's music is not bad, but doesn't seem on a par with Myst or other games. However, sound effects in Riven are quite realistic and frequently directional. We won't even go into the well-publicized bugginess of Riven (which occurs, by some accounts, both before and after installation of a game patch).
In a nutshell, Riven is just expensive eye candy, and not much else. If you do decide to go ahead and purchase Riven, you'll probably have more fun playing the Journeyman Project 3 demo included with the game, which has some hilarious sequences by Arthur (our personal favorite: Atlantis in Winnemucca).
Copyright © 1997 Balmoral Software (http://www.balmoralsoftware.com). Portions copyright © 1997 Cyan Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, redistribution or conversion is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Balmoral Software. Contents subject to change! For the latest information, see http://www.balmoralsoftware.com.