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 has two significant flaws:

1) You can't save your game.

Your save points are set by touching each Age's seven Journey Cloths. It's the game designers - not the gamer - who determines save points.

Good save points make it easy for the gamer to explore alternate endings, and more importantly, to avoid having to solve the same puzzle repeatedly.

But unless you play Uru perfectly, some Journey Cloths are placed so that you must solve several puzzles multiple times.

2) Your avatar can walk, run, climb and jump.

Unlike Myst, Riven and Exile, Uru is no longer restricted to point-and-click movement from one scene to the next.

But there's a problem.

Your avatar is keyboard and mouse controlled, not joystick enabled. Its third person perspective is occasionally sloppy. Moreover, it can't use its hands when moving objects; that's a ridiculous constraint.

Uru's minimum hardware requirements are...

800 MHz Pentium/AMD Athlon
250 MB RAM
32 MB nVidia GForce 1 - 4 or FX/ATI Radeon 7000 - 9800 or better

Assuming you don't want long delays between Age loads, I strongly recommend, "or better."

My guess, Uru really wants a 2 GHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM and a 128 MB video card. Uru is designed for higher end hardware.

Uru also has hardware requirement gotchas. Here are some of them...

* 98SE is specific; no allowance is made for Windows 98.

* The video card requirement is precise: it's either a 32 MB nVidia GForce 1 - 4 or FX, or an ATI Radeon 7000 - 9800 or better.

No other video card will work, including lower end versions of nVidia or ATI Radeon.

* The "CD-ROM: 4x or better (not recommended for use with CD-RWs)" requirement is imprecise. Didn't fully appreciate it until I bought the expansion pack, which clearly states, "This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some disk and virtual drives."

Uru will not work properly in either a CD-R or CD-RW.

Finally, here's an Uru synopsis:

You begin in the Desert.

After touching seven Journey Cloths, you are given access to a linking book, which takes you to Relto (Island in the Clouds). Relto is your refuge and starting point between game sessions.

To solve Uru, you must transfer pillars from Teledahn (Mushroom Age), Gahreesen (Fortresses Age), Kadish Tolesa (Mechanical Age) and Eder Gira/Eder Kemo (Volcano and Garden Ages) from the Bahro (Pillar Cave) to Relto.

When all four pillars reside in Relto, you transfer them back to the Bahro and return to the Desert to solve its remaining puzzles.

Date: 2004-07-04
A step down for the series
Myst was great, Riven was insanely hard but genius, and Exile was spectacular, with perfect difficulty and great puzzles...with Uru, however, the series has gone slightly awry. The idea of an avatar isn't entirely terrible, but the ideas of kicking things into position and having to walk and jump accurately to progress are. As for the first one, just let us have an inventory, and have a set position for the items when we figure out where to put them back down! The soccer game that pervades Uru is absurd. And the need for nimble fingers has no place in the Myst franchise; if we want to test our ability to run and jump skillfully, we'll go play a platformer. Give us the ability to run and jump, sure, but don't make us master it in order to win the game.

A few of the puzzles in Uru, in my view, require a mental leap outside of the realm of logic, but others may disagree. In any case, I eagerly anticipate Myst IV: Revelation, and hope it will be less like this subchapter and more like Exile.

Date: 2004-05-28
Bravo!
After reading some of the reviews, one thing is very obvious... people are totally missing the point of this game.

Uru is an amazing story, one that you get to learn as you explore an even more amazing world. The point is not to "win" or "beat the game" - it's to find out more about the D'ni people, and most importantly - where they went. ( Maybe, that's why there are so many notebooks laying around?? Just maybe? ) I played Myst (though never played Riven nor Exile )and I found Uru far more user-friendly then the first Myst released.

I personally, LOVE this game - and am biting my nails just waiting for the next expansion. It truly is a story to live - one that will keep you guessing around every corner.

Yes, you have to use your noggin, but again - that's the point. This is not an "I win" game - it's an evolving world that you get to play a part in. A world done beautifully and one that you will find yourself happily lost in for days.

Two thumbs up, in my opinion.

Date: 2004-05-20
Not good
This game is not user friendly. It is not like the other Myst games. I can't even get a start on the game. It won't save when you want to quit. Whe you do quit and come back to the game, it starts from the beginning again. The mouse curser is all over the screen and hard to control. I guess you have have to play it all in one day. The URU website is complicated and offers no help at all. I wasted my money on this game for which I can't play. I played the other Myst games with none of this type of trouble.