They Made A New Riven Game!

Well, "new" is a bit inaccurate. It's a remaster/remake of the
original 1997 adventure classic. But it's a bit more than the usual
"hey, let's upscale the textures and call it a day" work a lot of
remakes get --the game jumps from the tile-stepping of the original to
a fully 3D-rendered world where you can explore every nook and cranny,
similar to "RealMyst"--, and it's been nearly thirty years since the
last time the game saw a release, so it FEELS a lot more like a "new"
game than a lot of its competitors.

It's still "Riven" though, so if you aren't into world-development
that's more about atmosphere than sense, and annoying logic puzzles,
then it's unlikely that you'll enjoy this game much more than you did
back in '97. Still, the first-person camera does add an openness and
freedom to the world that was sadly lacking in the original. The early
Myst games always felt like you were looking at the world through a
series of postcards: it was flat, lacking interactivity. It made the
world feel hollow despite all the developers best attempts at creating
ambiance and mystique. Being able to move about and look at things
from whatever angle /I/ want --instead of the perfectly positioned
angle the developers insisted on in the older games-- adds a lot of
life to the game.

Well, at least that's how it feels watching others play the game (and
what I remember when I played "RealMyst" back in 2001 ;-). The game
looks quite nice too; the texturing is well detailed and it all feels
very tactile. But I admit, I haven't purchased this new version. Not
yet, anyway. $30 is a bit much for a game that -despite modern visual
flourishes- is still three decades old, and isn't really one that
excited me that much even when it was new (plus, just don't buy games
new. Always wait a few months to let other suckers beta-test them for
you ;-)

Still, I'm pretty sure that EVENTUALLY new-Riven is going to be added
to my library, just so I can play around in its lusciously detailed
world (and maybe to see how poorly it compares to its aged brethren).
I'm normally quite judgmental against remasters and remakes --for the
most part, I find them unnecessary and would prefer resources be spent
on NEW games-- but maybe for this one I'll be a bit more lenient.





(also, I've been on a roll with these "They Made A New <insert game
here>" posts so when I saw Riven I knew I had to give it the same
treatment ;-)