After three years of waiting, Myst fans (all four of us) can finally get our hands on Cyan Worlds’ Myst Online: Uru Live, the promised multiplayer online component to Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The resurrected Myst Online comes courtesy of your friends and mine at GameTap, offered at no additional cost to the service’s $9.95 per month pricetag, and is scheduled to go live tomorrow.
Uru Live offers puzzlephiles the opportunity to explore the game’s many, many ages (read: worlds) with other players, though most ages’ puzzles can be solved by a single player (with the exception of two). Additionally, Cyan Worlds promises that the game’s story will be guided, however slightly, by the actions of the player community as well as monthly story updates. Uru Live plays as its predecessors played: exploration, puzzle solving, and a phenomenal rarity in online PC gaming: no level grinding. Huzzah!
When you get down to brass tacks there seems to be two types of gamers: those who like Myst and its progeny and those who absolutely abhor it. Nothin’ wrong with that. For those of us eternally saddled in the former group, this is big news, and even bigger news for those of us looking for a cooperative online experience that doesn’t require massive grind-fests or raid after raid after raid. As a bonus for gamers like me who have remained heretofore unlikely to sign up for GameTap, Uru Live should provide a hell of an incentive to climb aboard. Hey, I’ll finally get around to playing the new Sam and Max!
