This game was bad. In fact, it was exactly the worst amount of bad — bad mixed in with just enough good that I couldn’t just give up on it. Here’s what they did. They started with a classic Myst style, then carefully excised two of the things that made Myst great.

The first thing they excised was the interface. URU takes the well-loved Myst-style interface and replaces it with a 3-D world that you explore via a customizable avatar. Myst was far better as plain old Myst than as a bastard hybridization of Myst and Tomb Raider.

The second thing they excised was the puzzles. No, I’m not kidding. URU is Myst with no puzzles. Instead of solving puzzles, you just explore the Ages. You explore every inch of the Ages, because there are cleverly concealed swatches of cloth, and you must tag all of them before you can clear the level. Myst was far better as plain old Myst than as a bastard hybridization of Myst and Banjo-Kazooie.

That said, I haven’t been quite fair to URU. There are actually a few puzzles. There are some pretty cool ones in Kadish Tolesa, and the third third of the game, Path of the Shell, is fairly puzzleful. I can’t say that I agree with the game mechanic of making the player wait 15 real time minutes to solve a puzzle, but at least there were puzzles.

And of course, it’s beautiful. The D’ni ages are all kind of grey and brown buildings, but the other ages are very pretty, and the concept behind Ahnonay was especially cool. It’s too bad there weren’t really quite enough clues for the game to be self-contained. And no coherent ending — the game was a work in progress.

If, after reading this, you still want to play Myst URU, here are my suggestions for how to play it and actually make it an enjoyable experience. I’ll list them in order of importance.

1. Go in order. Play Ages Beyond Myst first (the leftmost clump of books, the ones inside the Relto sky island pedestals), then after you finish that, play To D’Ni (the three books with the A-frame symbol on them), then after you finish that, play Path of the Shell (the best of the three). That’s the one with the five books with the shell sign on them. I got overwhelmed because I hopped back and forth between what are largely three separate games.
2. When you get to the Egg Room with the five Linking Stones, go to the back-left Linking Stone first. That will save you a ton of wasted exploration and annoyance.
3. Use UHS or a walkthrough to find all the journey cloths and Great Zero Markers. It just isn’t fun to wander around the level over and over again looking for the random doodad you missed the first time around.
4. Make liberal use of UHS. There are a lot of puzzles that, in my opinion, don’t give enough clues to be figured out in a self-contained way. Remember now, I’ve played through all the Myst games and I didn’t need very many hints. But in URU, I needed quite a few hints just to keep myself from screaming in frustration.

Enjoy! Or not! Your choice. (:

I did it, I did it! *dancing*

After three somewhat grueling hours of tinkering, futzing, Gooooooogling, reading, downloading, installing, re-installing, and uninstalling, interspersed with occasional short bouts of crying, hair-pulling, pacing, and breathing, I did it!!

I got my new MP3 player to work with Ezmerelda!

The drivers don’t work. Vista refused to acknowledge the player at all. Everything I downloaded failed to help, every troubleshooting path I followed led me nowhere. I was even tinkering with the scary permanent depths of my computer!

Finally, I found a link to an article that linked to a page that described what to do (with no links), Goooogled that and found another article that linked to a troubleshooting article that linked to a different page with a firmware update, requiring me to use a computer with XP (Pace’s laptop was, fortunately, at my disposal) to reformat the player, which then successfully got Vista to recognize the player as a viable device.

I’m transferring nearly 6Gs of music as I type! I did it, I did it, I did it!

I am insufferably pleased with myself. A few months ago, I would have given up in tears and returned Blueberry, but today – today she’s mine, loaded up with music.

To celebrate, we’re going to lunch and then to buy blue earbuds to match my brand-new blue MP3 player!

Woot!

About two weeks ago, Ragen and Pace and I had many conversations regarding the present and future of Cloud Nine Staffing, and mutually decided it was best to go separate ways. We worked out an amicable separation, and finished the hand-off this afternoon.

We have now officially stepped away from Cloud Nine.

The primary reason that motivated me in this decision is simple: I realized that, if Ragen came to me now in my current situation and asked me to be her business partner, I would turn her down. I am not capable of being a full-time mother for an unschooler and a full-time business owner and maintain sanity. Additionally, C9 is in a place where it really needs two full-time people able to work hard and focus, and while I was certainly devoted to the success of the business and believed in the mission, I am unwilling to put my work before my kid or my Pace.

I am sad to step down. I really loved C9 and really believed in what we were doing, and I will miss being part of such an awesome company. Toward the end things got a little rough, which makes me all the more sure that this is the right path for all of us, but all in all, it was an excellent year.

I do, however, feel that this was by far the best thing for me and my son and wife. I’m also looking forward to a long, healing vacation – after which Pace and I will start something new and amazing together.

I just finished Rhem 3, and I liked it a lot.

When I looked at the cover, I thought “Sigh, another Myst knockoff.” And yes, it is a Myst knockoff, but it’s no Crystal Key. It’s very well done, and a huge amount of fun, if and only if you love puzzles. There is no plot. The scenery isn’t breathtaking or fanciful like in Myst. It’s well rendered, and I did indeed gasp with amazement like I did in Myst, but for different reasons. In Myst, I gasped at the many beautiful and awe-inspiring views, landscapes, and structures. In Rhem, I gasped at the sheer vastness of the place. “Oh my God, it’s another entire new area!” I would exclaim quite often.

In a sense, Rhem 3 is one enormous puzzle. Many actions you take in one area will cause you to backtrack to an entirely different area to reap the consequences of your initial action. But it’s not arbitrary non-local effects (which I hate). If you follow the pipe connected to that button, and follow it, and figure out where it comes out on the other side when it goes into that wall… it will eventually lead you to the place where the non-local effect happens.

My favourite instance of this is how there are tons of clues scrawled on the backs of doors. There will be a door that can only be opened and closed from one side. You have to close it, then make a huge winding loop around the entire game to get to the other side of the door to see the clue. Similarly for elevators and such. I really like that kind of puzzle. It requires really knowing your way around the area and becoming holistically familiar with Rhem. You can’t just have a separate page of notes for each area, because they are all connected. All eight pages of notes worth. (: Maps were very important, and I really enjoyed mapping out the different areas. It was HARD, because the world is so intrinsically 3-D. Sometimes I’d need to know what was directly under me or above me, and that was very challenging to map accurately.

I loved the puzzles in Rhem 3. There was a really cool puzzle where two bridges could be either up or down, and when they were up they could be used as ladders. A tricky sequence of ups, downs, platform manipulations and crossovers was needed to get to all the various places. A lot of them are like “Oh, I’ve seen that set of symbols before! They’re paired with this other set of symbols, and this other set of symbols is the key to unlock this puzzle.”

Minor spoilers ahead.

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