Manufacturer: Ubisoft Find all Ubisoft reviews ESRB Rating: Everyone Platform(s): Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP Release Date: November 11, 2003 Average Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars	Retail Price: $29.99 Online Price: $14.62 A discount of $15.37! * Price is subject to change.
Features: Experience a new freedom of movement, a first for the Myst franchise: Explore each unique age in real-time 3D, moving your character effortlessly through the world without pointing and clicking. Create a realistic character: Choosing from a wide variety of facial and clothing features, you will be able to create a male or female avatar that you will use to explore the world. The range of character options allows you to appear the way you look, or the way you want to look. Explore the mysterious and graphically intense world of Uru. Uru's work-of-art style graphics will immerse and captivate you like never before. Follow an epic storyline: At the request of Yeesha, the eccentric daughter of Atrus, you'll journey through a variety of different ages, and discover the lost civilization of the D'ni people. As the story unfolds, you'll be drawn deeper into the D'ni civilization.

User Submitted Uru: Ages Beyond Myst Reviews (cont...)

Uru is another Myst game but in a different vein - and so some Myst fans will love it, some will hate it.

Rather than the prerendered graphics of the previous games, Uru contains immersive 3D environments that are rendered on the computer and so allow you much more freedom to wander round and explore. Unlike the static first person views of the other games, you control an avatar that can run, jump, climb and crawl all over the gameplay area. So if you ever wanted to try to jump on a rock, slide down a handrail or wade in a lake, you can.

Of course, this represents a major departure from the lack of any challenges requiring running, jumping, or timed character manipulation in the earlier games. People unfamiliar with this sort of interface will take some time coming to grips with it. And the presence of timed puzzles where your avatar must do certain things within a limited time will frustrate those whose control of the avatar is not that good. There are not many absolutely crucial jumps or timed runs, but it is frustrating in a Myst game to work out what you have to do but just not have the physical ability to get your avatar to do it. Even more frustrating is the fact that you can 'die' - well, not die exactly, but if you miss a jump and fall into a lava pit you have to link back to another area, then restore your game to where you were before. The game automatically saves your progress to a certain extent, so you won't be caught out having to redo a puzzle, but it is frustrating having to wait a minute or two for the various game sections to reload in order to continue.

The game looks fantastic and perhaps the best aspect is the many large, spectacular landscapes that you explore, all of which have their charms. Of course, this comes at the cost of needing a high-end system more suited to first person shooters than adventure games. Adventure gamers may need to shell out to upgrade their system to play this game, which you may think is a brave move on the part of the developers until you recall that the original Myst game caused millions of people to go out and buy a CD-Rom drive for the first time. Upgrading to play a Myst game is not new.

There are the usual fiendish puzzles. I've written before about the new elements of dexterity that are needed for some of them, which will put some people off. Also, the logic for some of the puzzles is extremely elusive. And the game commits one of the cardinal sins of adventure games, requiring you to go back and forward transporting things from one area to another more than once. This just causes frustration - you've solved the puzzle, why trudge back and forth to complete it?

The greatest disappointment with the puzzles, however, is that there are not many of them. Only one 'age' is puzzle-intensive in the way we've come to expect from the Myst series. Two others have a moderate number of puzzles, and one has, in reality, only one puzzle in the whole age.

In fact, while there are vast areas to explore, many of them are not related to the gameplay at all. Several of them were clearly intended as spaces to be put to use in a planned online extension of the game, which has now been cancelled. The game is certainly self-contained, but is also clearly a lead-in for the online game. There are a number of locations which will not make much sense to the offline player, as they play no part in the offline game.

The story is also much more basic than earlier games. Essentially, both Uru and the proposed Uru Live were about gaining access to the ancient city of D'ni and exploring a number of ages. You have no real quest, merely a mission to explore, and the reason why you are exploring is never quite clear. The game then becomes a simple treasure hunt. In each age you need to find seven panels and then depart through a final portal. There are also bonus items that are not essential to the game but which allow you to customise, to a degree, your own 'personal age', Relto. Really, the plot goes not much further than that, although there is a back story that involves Atrus' daughter, Yeesha, sending you on a quest that never really develops.

Perhaps to enhance the sense of exploration and make up for the lack of story, there are copious journals scattered through the game written by other explorers describing the history of the D'ni people, and their own explorations. These don't advance the story at all and are of pretty much no use in playing the game - they're just there for colour. This would be frustrating to the dilligent gamer who takes copious notes of everything found just in case it becomes relevant.

Uru was initially intended as an online game only, and it was only late in its development that the decision was made to take some of the content and release it as an offline game. This is no doubt the reason why the game lacks some of the structure, logic and coherence as a total package that the earlier games had. It was probably a wise decision to do this, as signup rates for the online game were apparently very poor - and as many of the reviews here show, a lot of people had no interest in the online game. To compensate for the cancellation of the online game, a free expansion pack is being released for downloa in mid-March that should tidy up at least some of the current loose ends with the game, as well as providing some new areas to explore and new 'goodies' such as clothing items for your avatar and customisations for Relto.

The initial release of the game was fairly buggy, so be sure to download the patch available from the publisher's website or via the 'update' feature in-game. You will definitely need a machine that matches or betters the tech specs given - the game is hungry on computing power. Even with a high powered machine, expect some slow load times on particular areas. Fortunately the game comes on one disc so there is no CD-swapping.

In brief - if your system is up for it, and you would like to journey through some truly spectacular scenery with the odd mindbending puzzle along the way, give the game a go. Also, don't forget to keep your eyes out for an expansion pack when it becomes available. The interface can be awkward but stick with it because the visual rewards are great. It is disappointing, however, that the game's origins have prevented this game from continuing in the Myst tradition of carefully plotted, highly logical, high concept games that were far more than just pretty scenery, and which appealed to so many outside the usual gaming market.

Date: 2004-03-01
Finnally beaten
Well, yesterday I just finished the game and I can't tell you how impressed I am! This game is trully a breakthrough in the Myst games and in the overall world of coumputer gaming. I mean, this game is just great. You also control an avatar instead of just clik to go places. You get to explore way more and in some of the images there were over 3 million polygons! And what Myst game could be complete without linking books and someone who is related to Atrus? Well, this game has linking books and never before seen linking stones along with Yesha, the daughter of Atrus and Cathrine. This also takes place now when the ruins of the Dn'i have been uncovered and you enter them via linking book from the Cleft that Atrus had been raised in. There is also the legendary Dn'i city which has been uncovered and most of the time you go there via linking book, you usually link to a DRC (Dn'i Restoration Council) field ofice. Those usually have some information in them, but its overall meaningless.

On To the Gameplay

Like i said earlier, you control an avatar instead of just click to go places. You use the arrow keys to control it and I can't tell you how much you should value that. Also, more puzzles require that advantage becase they are more problem then puzzle. For examp: You have to get across a stream without touching water or running becase (you'll find out later in the game) and all you have found in this age that will asist you is a whole lot of baskets that were found in a cavern (you actually start out with one, but you find more). What do you do? You also have to come up with that idea from scrach and the game doesn't help you find the answe one bit. Some of the other things include walking to a door across a very large suport wire, jumping from a rotating building to a pinacle and then to another rotating building, and walking along a very narow ledge to find something that you need, and fliping swiches in the right order before a pump depresurizes. Once again, its up to you to find yout what you have to do. You also have to jump a whole lot to solve a lot of these puzzles. There is also this thing called UruLive where you joing the DRC and you can explore new ages and interact with thousands of other online people.

The recomendations
I recomend this game to anyone who likes Myst games or wants to see really cool scenery. YOu also have to keep a cool head at all times and we recomend that you keep the third person view when doing anything that requires jumping or knowing where things around you are. (usually later in the game). The graphics are better than Riven and you can explore full 3-d enviroments instead of just explore a large stack of renderd images that are put togeather so that they look like a world. And if you click on something, it doesn't just do something, but it shows your avatar presisng the thing and then show the thing do something. Me, I just wish that we could use linking books for public transportation. It could aslo replace space travel. You could just link to the international space station or maybe even mars. It would also replace Fed-ex because you could just link your package to where its suposed to go.

Date: 2004-03-01
Game..
I thought this game was awesome. As long as you have the required components, that are right on the Box!, and me personally, i dont care about online uru. The graphics were excellent, the puzzles were challenging, but not impossible, and i thought it was fun.

Date: 2004-02-29
Having finished, I changed my mind.
I reviewed the game before, maybe even twice, I don't remember, when I was only partway through. Having finished it, I've decided that the plusses far outweight the minuses, and I've rekindled my total Myst obsession. It's really too bad that Live was scrapped by Ubi (*insert lots of nasty comments about UbiSoft*) because Cyan obviously worked very hard. The forthcoming expansion packs should be fantastic, though, and avoid the server lag problems that Live had.

This is the major caveat: THEY MEAN IT with the system specs. If your system does not match or exceed what's on the box, this game will be a waste of your money. Other than that, I found that all of the puzzles were eventually solvable (far easier than Riven, anyway), and that even the hardest jump puzzles were doable after some practice (and I'm really bad at jumping games). I just can't wait to see more. Beautiful.

Date: 2004-02-28
Works on my machine
I don't care what the requirments are!! This game looks almost ... as riven and my machine is a year 2000 homebuilt PC wit an Amd Anthalon 800 Mhz processor and a really good graphics card that makes my computer really slow. Uru runs great on my machine and as long as your computer has enough RAM and a great graphics card, the prossesor requirements are meaningless.