Riven. Aw, Man.
(originally ranted in 1997)

I, like the vast majority of you, own both Riven and Myst. I was hooked from the first swirling painting in Myst. I couldn't get enough. I played Myst almost straight through with my buddy Jeff. So very many cigarettes and cups of coffee were consumed. We were obsessed. But then it was over. I was lost. When would I be needed again to save Catherine? I needed to be needed to save her now!

I could not wait for Riven. I sat on the edge of my seat for what seemed like eternity, reading geek mags, hoping for a glimpse into the new world I would be forced to inhabit. After playing Myst a few more times, news broke: Riven was coming. I rushed up to the local computer-everything store and put myself on the waiting list. Done.

And "waiting" it was. But it finally came out. I forked over my forty-five, and rushed over to Jeff's house. Coffee was made, cigarettes were lit, the Mac wasn't crashing. We were ready. And we began.

We were goofy. We were so blown away as to be impressed with the gamma helper, and sound assistant. The game began, and we spent the entire night just wandering around the place, consuming all the graphics. We didn't even try to solve anything. We said "Wow" a lot. We were amazed. These were the best graphics we had ever encountered, and we were entranced.

The next night, we set to solving. We knew we could work through at least a couple of CDs before the night was handed over to daylight. Nope. Not a chance. We couldn't figure out a thing. I could solve the puzzles just fine once we got to one, but I couldn't navigate my way around this place to save my life, much less Catherine's. She was just gonna have to die. And Gehn? Gimme that jail-book so I can just trap myself and stop playing this damn game.

That was a long time ago. Jeff got custody of Riven long before I moved. I've been bored lately, so I thought I'd give it another spin. Why not? It was on sale. Surely I would fare better this time. I must be the most stupid person alive. Seems like I've been everywhere twice, but I can't get anything done. I can't tell what a puzzle is and isn't. I can't figure out what path goes where. And I still keep clicking on that damn beetle in the garden, expecting it to do something. It never does anything. It just keeps flying around. And I know that's all it's going to do, but I'm gonna click on it anyway. You can't stop me.

So I give up. I am pleading to all you game-creators out there: please, please, please, make the game playable. This is wearin' me out. Here's three tell-tale hints your game isn't working:

    1) If I've got to use the hints page on your web site just to figure out if whatever I just did even WAS a puzzle.

    2) If I've got to spend one time going through it, a second time drawing a map, and a third to play the game.

    3) If I would rather watch "The Making of ____" video than play the game.