I really wanted to give this game a positive review. I'm a big fan of Cyan Worlds and the Myst series, and Uru looks like it could've been a worthy spin-off. The graphics and ages are beautiful, the puzzles are creative, and the ability to create an avatar is a nice touch. It's also an interesting immersion into the culture and history of the D'ni people, who are mentioned but not discussed much in the previous games. That being said, I had to give this game a negative rating because of three serious flaws.
First, Uru doesn't allow you to save in the conventional way. Rather than bringing up a menu or exiting the game, you have to touch cloths with a hand design on them called "journey cloths." Each age has seven, and as you touch more of them, the hand lights up more. Because of this approach, you cannot restart the game, and you cannot continue where you left off; it just drops you off at a checkpoint, if you will. Worse still, there's no way to quit the game except to manually shut off the computer!
Second, while the history and culture side of things is interesting, there's no actual story or plot. There's no villain, no mission, no urgency. You just explore and learn. While there are objectives you can complete, it would've been more gripping to have a plot.
Third and finally, the biggest flaw with Uru is the controls. In all other Myst games, you have a first-person viewpoint. But since Uru has a third-person viewpoint, it seems more vital than ever for the camera to follow you. It does this a lot, but in some places, the camera changes. Sometimes, instead of facing your avatar's back and seeing what's ahead of you, the camera changes so that you face yourself. This reverses the directional controls, making simple navigating a pain! 3D systems like Nintendo 64 had already been out for a while when this game came out, and any player knows that the camera should always be facing the direction you're going. But what's even worse is that Cyan put several situations in this game where you need to jump. If you fall on a surface, even far down, you survive, but need to backtrack. And if you fall into a bottomless pit, you don't die, but you go back to your home age Relto. You then have to go all the way back to where you were just to get another shot! And in these situations, you'll find yourself missing the jumps a lot!
It's no surprise to me now that Uru was a flop that led to a financial depression for Cyan. From what I understand, the game was meant to solely be an online multiplayer game, which would've made more sense. But UbiSoft made sure to shut down the online portion, and what we got was this. If these three flaws had been ironed out, I'd consider it an awesome game! If you really want to know what's in Uru, I suggest looking up a YouTube walkthrough from one of the brilliant few who figured out the cruddy controls. I honestly find its true follow up, Myst V: End Of Ages, more fun to play because of returning to the conventional save function, controls, and plot line.
