quiet. 最近的评测

Obduction is the newest game from Cyan, the creators of some of the more famous puzzle exploration games of the 90s like Myst and Riven. In it you find yourself in a little mining town called Hunrath under mysterious circumstances. Further investigation shows that the city is completely abandoned, but must have been spurring with life only a short while ago. On top of that whole area seems to be surrounded by an unpassable barrier, beyond which alien structures can be seen.

With these first impressions the game instantly draws you in: What happened to this place? Where have its inhabitants gone? As the player explores the village they slowly but surely unravel the mysteries surrounding it.

Most of the initial puzzles are are logical and give great satisfaction when finally finding their solution. Later on a teleporting mechanic is introduced, which enables the player to move himself as well as parts of the terrain surrounding him between different locations, even opening up new and previously unknown worlds.

But here is where the problem lies: while the first puzzles are varied and interesting, the later parts of the game primarily focuses on the teleportation mechanic for its puzzles. This does of course not have to be a bad thing, but (at least for me) many puzzles of this kind ended in trial and error, just using teleporters and looking what changed after using them. On the other hand there are some puzzles for which it is easy to find the solution, but where actually reaching it turns into a chore because for some reason the game designers thought they had to needlessly slap the teleportation mechanic onto it. A prime example for this is a maze puzzle, which took me over 30 minutes to complete, because you have to use an excruciatingly slow elevator, a teleporter, some contraption which modifies part of the puzzle, and then another teleporter which was 50 meters away, and all of that for more than 15 times, assuming you get it the right way the first time around. Other puzzles only exist due to video game logic, because the player is unable to pass a waist-deep river, climb over a chain-link fence, or jump down a 30 centimeter ledge.

Overall the game has some pretty bad pacing issues. In the beginning you are bombarded with new information, making you hungry for more, but later on, this flood quickly subsides, letting you wouder what is going on. The game starts dragging on more and more the longer you play, with you walking the ever-same paths. To top this off, the end of the game feels rushed. While the initial areas keep you busy for hours, the last one doesn't contain a single puzzle and takes less than 5 minutes to complete. It feels like something is missing here, and that the scope of the game was initially intended to be much greater.

One undeniable strength of the game are its visuals. Each location is detailed, beautifully crafted and filled with stunning vistas. All characters are implemented in form of full motion video embedded into the 3d world, which works surprisingly well. This beauty comes at a price however, for the game is plagued with an unstable framerate. At many points, especially when turning cornes, it starts to stutter notably because new models have to be loaded. Additionaly this game absolutely requires you to use a SSD: when trying to play it while installed on my hard drive teleportation could take up to 5 minutes to complete, which is absolutely unacceptable considering how often this mechanic is used in the later puzzles. The use of a solid state drive fortunately reduces the problem by lowering the loading times to a few seconds.

The final verdict is a very restricted recommendation: If you want a good looking game or are a fan of the Myst games, this game can definitely be entertaining. For all other people, the number of downsides in the later part of the game is too numerous to justify a 30 Euro purchase. Seeing that the game definitely has potential, it can be hoped that a second installment of the series will improve on the mistakes made by this game.

Edit: corrected price, added spoiler tags

"But can it run Crysis?"

While most PCs nowadays should be able to run the first Crysis game, it still engrained itself into the collective minds of gamers mainly because of its graphics and even today, 9 years after release, this game still looks great. Because of its reputation as "playable graphics benchmark", I didn't go into this game expecting too much gameplaywise. Fortunately enough, the game plays outstandingly, featuring open levels which most often allow for multiple approaches to nearly every situation. The key gameplay mechanic is the so called "Nanosuit", which enables the protagonist to move at high speed, become invisible for a short time, gain super human strength or just be able to take more damage, transforming him into a one man army. Despite these abilities, the player still has to choose his actions with care, for exposing himself to multiple enemies can still mean a quick death. Due to this, the game remains challenging throughout the course of the adventure.

The mission design is rich in diversity: apart from on-foot sections, the player is often able to use enemy trucks and boats to traverse the large playing areas, and may even pilot tanks and a VTOL aircraft over the course of the single player campaign.

Unfortunately the game drops off towards its slightly unsatisfying conclusion, as it trades in its sandbox gameplay for more linear level design.

Overall Crysis was a very fun experience due to the freedom given to the player and the options given by the Nanosuit. While the story is by no means groudbreaking, the game is definitely worth picking up.