Obsidian

"Think Salvador Dali and The Matrix...or maybe not. That could give you a headache."

Obsidian. I LOVE that word. Definitely one of my favorite words of all time, right up there with gingivitis. About a year ago I found this word listed in the reviews for one of my favorite adventure gaming review sites. Attracted to nothing else but the word, I clicked on it. The reviewer gave the game an A and claimed it to be the first game he ever replayed. Sounds interesting. I continued to read and became pleasantly overwhelmed with the basis of the game. Apparently it had been about exploring an abstract dream world in which rules no longer apply. Unfortunately it turned out that the game is ultra rare and wouldn't run on my Virtual PC. After looking into it a little I found out that there was a Mac version that runs excellently in Mac OSX, which is what I have. Only problem is finding the Mac version to a rare PC game is going to be almost as hard as finding...well...Bigfoot I guess. Anyway, that was a YEAR ago. After frequently checking eBay since then a copy of the game for Mac had finally appeared. By luck I had managed to win it...for five dollars! Yeah that's right! Five simple dollars! I wasn't even the only one who bided. Anyway, let's just cut to the chase and see if the game really was worth all the waiting.

Graphics 10/10

Absolutely gorgeous...but not in the sense of pixels and shading and all that other pretty stuff that you'll never see in this genre. In the sense of WOW! That's COOL! The first 10 minutes of the game is actually a combination of photographs and live action video of a lush, green mountain. This is very cool and everything but the game sort of blows itself out of the water when the story kicks in and you're sucked into the dream world. That's when everything basically becomes prerendered computer generated stuff, which is completely mind-blowing! Like I said in the tagline, think Salvador Dali and The Matrix. The developers of this have gone all out to make everything as beautifully creative as they could think of. You're not going to find a better-looking Bureau where all the offices, elevators, and libraries are on the walls! Nor will you find a more mesmerizing golden, floating, cloud-generating ring in the sky. The game knows when and where it wants to dark, moving, or exciting. It's never truly gets grim and saddening like many games, it has seems to have a very cool and smooth atmosphere while still remaining bright and colorful. It does however get plenty overwhelming and mysterious at times. Obsidian is the only game I know of that can truly justify a videogame as art. If you're a fan of fun and wild ideas that are really out there, you'll enjoy checking the amount of detailed and twisted scenery the developers have laid out here.

Gameplay 10/10

To go right along with the insanely weird and creative graphics is it's creative game play. You may have heard of something called a Myst Clone. Obsidian is definitely one of them but it's so incredibly better than anything in the Myst series that it's hard to give credit where it's really due. There's a quote that usually goes along with this game: "Obsidian is the first game to do everything Myst did only much better", by Gamespot I believe. However this my version of the quote: "Obsidian is the first game to do everything Myst hadn't even dreamed of thinking up and kick it up times ten." This game has all the fun of living in a dream world where anything is possible. You want to walk up that side of the wall that would completely defy gravity? Well you then better jump to it. It might take a little bit of creative work to do so, but in time you'll definitely be doing it, that's for sure. The interface is extremely simple. Clicking in the direction of where you want to go will advance you to the next screen. The only different from Myst here is that instead of seeing another picture all of a sudden, you'll actually see a video that provides the transition to from one to another. Sometimes these can be a thrill to watch, as they usually feel like a really smooth rollercoaster. The developers also take a real advantage of this. The most fun thing to do in this game is to surprise yourself by finding the next most creative idea you've seen in a videogame.

Story 10/10

This is sort of where the whole Matrix thing kicks in. Surprisingly people have been looking for a great Matrix video game for the last seven years and it turns out there was one that came out three years before the movie. To be perfectly honest I did not think there was really going to be a story here. I thought it was going to have a simple premise and then just puzzles and exploration. This however isn't true. The game takes place in the year 2066 where two nanotechnologists named Lilah and her boyfriend or husband Max have just finished building Ceres, a satellite filled with Artificial Intelligence that counteracts the problems with the ozone layer and the air pollution. After all of the hard work, Lilah and Max decide to go on a camping trip to take a vacation. As they are camping to start to notice a large obsidian rock that grows bigger and bigger each day that passes. One day, Lilah decided to take a walk and explore the rest of the mountain. When she comes back to the campsite, she finds that Max is gone. Suddenly she hears a scream from the obsidian. She runs to the obsidian as fast as she can. However, as she gets there, she's sucked into it. When she awakens she finds herself in a dream world, with her main goal being to free Max. As time goes by, she begins to think Ceres has something to do with the obsidian. Now I had heard that the ending to this game had been unusually short and unsatisfying. I didn't think this at all. Something that should be pointed out is that there is a good ending and a bad ending. Though both are rather short, they both definitely satisfying. The only strange thing I thought was that the bad ending is actually somewhat better than the good ending. I guess for the story's sake it can be considered disappointing, but to me it seemed to have taken more time to make and had more effort in it. It also didn't have a depressing factor like most bad endings to videogames do it. It actually had a great “whoa” factor to it. As a matter of fact, all of the major cut scenes in this game have a “whoa” factor to it. Some of them play in a really fast paced and intense movie-like quality. There are a couple times where you'll get a montage of a bunch of random clips that sort of set the mood of the story. It makes me that some of the clips might have once played a bigger role earlier in the game, but were later cut out.

Puzzles 9/10

This is possibly either the worst factor for some players or the best. I have never seen an adventure game with such unique and wild puzzles like these. Most of them are outrageously complex, and that can put some off. Sometimes the puzzles can be a little insane, like going through a maze that requires a different sequence of different colored cards for each door you go through. Sometimes the puzzles can be just like, "wow, now that's cool", such as moving around a giant floating rock in the distance to change where the door behind you leads to. It's more of the later mentioned puzzles that will catch your attention. Some of them are such so creative and satisfying that gave me chills when I solved them. Other puzzles are just plain out head-scratchers. You can expect to be running to a walkthrough or a hints website quite a bit. For me there was only really one puzzle that was almost too complex to bother with. If I had taken all the time to really figure it out in my busy schedule, though, I would have been completely fulfilled with the reward for it. Almost of the puzzles in the are intertwined in the game world and help progress the story perfectly. There are also a few puzzles in the game that are not required and are there for no real reason other than to please you or give you hints. Of course, even though they aren't required, you'll still end up doing them anyway because they're just so cool. The last couple of puzzles in the end, though not outrageously hard like some of the others in the game, are very, very accomplishing. I was proud when I had finished them. Then I did them all over again just to see the other ending.

Replaybility 10/10

Oh, it's here. This is one of those games that makes you only want to play it again because it was such a memorial experience. It's like watching you're favorite movie again. This is a great game to get lost in again and again.

Let me just say this, this is the best five dollars I've ever spent. I know a lot of people say that when they when they find gem for cheap, but this is a masterpiece. This game is a perfect example of how creative the adventure game genre, (or videogames period), can be. The thing that shocks me is that any developer can stand up and say that they are can going to create something that's never been seen before; but to actually pull it off and hit it out of the park? That's incredible. It's also insanely ahead of its time. Next month it will be ten years old, and it still managed to make my jaw drop. This only heightens my idea that if you want to find something completely groundbreaking and innovated, you don't need look to keep looking toward the future titles; especially when there are so many out that no one's ever heard of before. This title comes spectacularly close to a perfect score, but just misses it because it's sometimes too outrageous puzzles. If you ever find a copy of this game, snatch it up.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/27/06