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Puzzle Fanatics-This game is for you

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This was an ok game. For people who love puzzles this is a must have..Has puzzles galore. The graphics are ok, if not fullscreen. Basically you wander around solving the puzzles to get to the finale. I wasn't really impressed, liked both Syberia games much better.

A very good Myst 3 clone

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: July 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Have you played Myst 3 Exile? If so, you exactly know what to expect from Aura: the interface, the gameplay, the various contraptions, devices and machines, even the landscapes and architectures are strongly derivative. But I DON'T consider this as a criticism! On the contrary, Aura is a good, solid game, very welcome after the dismal disappoinment (IMO) of Uru. Not much of a story, and I have read many reviews stressing the fact that Aura is only a string of puzzles. That's basically true, but don't think to the nearly impossible mathematical puzzles of games like Schizm I & II (but the first Schizm was a great game); rather, almost all of Aura's puzzles (never terribly difficult) are visual, based on manipulations of symbols and patterns; they require attention, logic and observations, and solving them is very satisfying. All in all, I'd say Aura is one of the best among Myst and Myst-clone games as to the quality of the puzzles. Add an intriguing atmosphere, very nice visuals and an excellent price: what you get is, maybe, not a groundbreaking masterpiece but certainly a solid, entertaining (may I say intelligent?) game, deserving success. My only complaint is the comparative brevity of the game; but even that is O.K for me if prelude to a (welcome) sequel.

Fun puzzler for those who like Myst-like games

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 113 / 116
Date: August 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In Aura, it's hard to avoid the comparisons with Myst. Parallel worlds for you to explore. Puzzles that range from imaginative to tedious. Clicking around, searching for clues.

If you love the Myst series, you'll feel right at home here. You're tossed into the world with pretty much no explanation, and really, you know that you need none. The plot is pretty silly. The graphics are gorgeous. All you are doing is wandering from room to room trying to solve the puzzles.

Some puzzles involve pulling levers to turn machinery on. Some involve spinning lights to turn machinery on. You get the general idea. Clues are strewn around to help you - it should never be a random clicking to get something to work. Of course if you *interpret* the clues properly, it works. If you are baffled by the clues, you can get quite stumped.

This is definitely a game that benefits from team play. The more brains you have looking at something, the more likely it is that ONE of you will spot what should happen. Sometimes it just involves looking more closely at the details of the screen.

Like all Myst-like games, there are some ANNOYING puzzles where you have to look down and sideways to see that lever hiding in the corner. If you don't spot it, you can waste days wandering from room to room, having no idea what you've missed.

Still, when you finally get the puzzle, it's a great sense of achievement. In general most of the puzzles make at least SOME sense, and the graphics are nice. I've found this in the bargain bin recently, so if you see this at a cheap price, pick it up. It could help exercise your little grey cells for a while!

Starts well, but loses focus

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 60 / 60
Date: August 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If, like me, you like the kind of game where you spend hours trying to operate unknown, alien machinery, you'll love the beginning of Aura. There were more than enough Big Bronze Wheels, Levers, Steam Pipes, Colored Lights and Electric Arcs, all beautifully animated, and emitting the right kind of satisfying clunks, buzzes and whirs.
(there was some kind of back story involving assembling the Great Zoggin and protecting it from Belphar the Evil, but you can choose to ignore it with impugnity - the point is to turn on the machines so that you can reach the next stage).
The game makes a sterling attempt to be non-linear, at least within the major sections. It's better than a lot of Adventure games in this respect.
The cut scenes are frequent and nicely animated. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use. The ambient sounds and background music are appropriate and non-intrusive. Interaction with CG characters is natural, and doesn't fall into the 'ask the right question or you'll have to start again' syndrome.
So why four rather than five stars?
The game is set in two locations. The first is mechanistic, and the puzzles are logical. The second is 'magical', which means that some of the puzzles are just a tad unintuitive (i.e. daft). There's one in particular, involving a bird, where I had to resort to a walkthrough, and I think it colored my view of the rest of the game.
The ending was abrupt, with the promise of a sequel. I really wish game developers would stop doing that.
On the whole, though, a nicely contructed game, and well worth the money.

My fate is not being able to play the game.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: August 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I enjoyed playing this game up to the point it becomes impossible. How is this? It started in Dragast, the second stage of the game. The first puzzle I encountered was visually blocked out by green and white vertical lines that cover the entire screen. I thought maybe this was an isolated problem. I was able to get by this one puzzle referring to a walkthrough (kind of ruins it for me). The very next puzzle had a similar problem. I contacted Dreamcatcher and was given a patch to download and install that was supposed to fix the problem. No such luck. I have since been requested to provide some information from my pc and I am waiting for a response. This problem occured with two separate sets of disks. Only some of the puzzles are affected. I think the graphics are great and would love to be able to play this game minus the problems.

Aura Fate of the Ages

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I am giving this game one star because I had the exact same problem that J. Tyson had. I think I would have like it if I had been able to play it beyond the first level. A note to J. Tyson: Would you please let me know if you find a solution to this problem.

Breathtaking graphics but some driver issues

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a beautifully rendered game and the production design is equal to or surpasses many current movies. The graphics team gets giant kudos for their efforts, so if your main purpose in playing adventure games is to be immersed in alternate worlds, you will likely enjoy yourself in the lands of Aura. The puzzles are sometimes fun, sometimes obtuse and sometimes simply, "WHY am I doing this?", but there are walkthroughs on the web when needed.

As with all games, especially newly released ones, there are some game play issues. I didn't lose my cursor and my game didn't freeze as some reports on the web echoed repeatedly. After installing (3 CDs that seemed to take longer to install than any I can remember) the sound codex seemed changed. I could no longer listen to DVD movies using the speakers, I had to use earphones. The good news is that after uninstalling, this seems to be back to normal.

I installed patch 1 (newly released at that time) to hopefully fix a problem encountered in the house of mirrors. The mouse, without any input from me, appeared to be clicking through random scenes. There were ghost images and it was quite lovely really, but didn't get me where I needed to go within the game and eventually the program closed. So ---- patch one (374K I believe) is actually a new install program it seems as you have to reinstall all three CDs (sigh). It did not fix the problem of the random mouse clicks but it DID slow my mouse down to wading through Jello mode and made it VERY difficult to left click. This, unfortunately happened all programs, not just the game.

So, my advice is to not install patch 1 which turns the game into version 1.02, unless you have major issues. And, if you do, make sure that you have a restore point set and try not to get any viruses so that you need to turn restore off (my problem). On uninstall the mouse came back a bit, but not to its former zeal (smile). I installed the mouse drivers that came with the mouse again (Logitech wireless) and it is pretty much back to normal. I will adjust :))

I have a fairly new machine (HP 17 notebook) and the game worked well all in all, but I did get quite a few blue screen of death memory dumps and some black screen "windows won't start normally" along the way, so I assume this is a taxing program on your system. You might want to try the free downloads at several of the game sights before buying if your system isn't current.

And if you love the game, it looks like a sequel is planned.

solution

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

try updating your graphics card driver. should help. i gave this 5 stars because it shouldn't be dragged down by 2 people who don't know what they're doing. keep your computers up to date and make sure it meets the minimum requirements for this game, otherwise it probably won't work

Solid Myst Clone

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: September 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In the world of _Aura_, "the Elders" of your people have learned the secrets of constructing alternate realities. The key to this power lies in a set of magical rings and sacred artifacts scattered throughout several dimensions. From time to time, students are sent out to try to unite the rings and artifacts as part of their training. Few succeed. You play Umang, the latest student to undertake this quest. Shortly into your adventure, you learn that civil war has broken out among "the clans" and a powerful warlord now wishes to seize the rings and artifacts for himself. It's even more important that you get to them first!

Aura is a lovely 1st person game in the tradition of Myst, with many mechanical puzzles--devices to repair, vehicles to get running and secret passages to uncover--few inventory puzzles and virtually no conversations. What interaction with other characters there is occurs in cut scenes. Occasionally you get information, but it rarely moves the story along. So, for fans of puzzle driven games _Aura_ is a treat. It's been a long time since I've played a game so satisfyingly complex; in fact, I was stymied several times in the beginning just because I wasn't used to puzzles being challenging. But if you prefer 3rd person, character and story driven games, you might not like this one so much.

I ran _Aura_ on WIN XP on an AMD 2800 2-odd gig processor with a relatively new graphics card with no trouble at all; in fact, I was very, very pleased at the smoothness of the game. I did install the patch up front, however; I had been warned about possible glitches and wanted to avoid them. So I would recommend doing this.

Graphics are quite lovely, with 360-degree panning. I did find the panning somewhat nauseating at times, something that has not affected me for a long while. Sound was unremarkable--neither bad nor good. As is standard in this kind of game, each location has its own little musical motif. Most of them are unmemorable, except for the one that bears a striking resemblance to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."

Saves are unlimited, but you only get to see one saved game at a time when either saving or loading, and you can't name then for yourself; you're only given an image and a time/date. So it's hard to keep track of them. There are no timed puzzles and no action sequences. There is one section where you can be killed, but you are immediately allowed to try again from where you made your mistake, as many times as necessary.

So why only four stars? There was quite a bit of pixel hunting and places where hotspots were not immediately apparent. Where hotspots were close together, it was hard to tell the difference between them. I think this could have been easily remeied by making the active cursor a little more different from the inactive cursor. In one section the main puzzle was extremely incoherent and there was no indication whatsoever when you managed to solve it, meaning that you tended to wander around the area looking for something else to do for quite some time until you either checked a walkthrough to see what you missed or gave up and moved on by chance. Although the box claims that you have "four distinct realities to explore," you only spend about ten seconds in the 4th before the game is over. I think that's quite dishonest. The ending was a little abrupt and contrived to set up the obligatory sequel. Plus, there are a couple things that happen to you early in the game that you *know* are going to turn out badly (making a deal with someone who is obviously a bad guy, for example) that you can't do anything about.

Still, _Aura_ was a very enjoyable and absorbing game,about 25 long hours with one place where I needed a little direction. I had looked forward to it for quite some time and it did not disappoint.

I'd love to be able to play the whole game, but...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: September 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My review could be an exact copy of what J. Tyson wrote on August 17:

enjoyed playing this game up to the point it becomes impossible. How is this? It started in Dragast, the second stage of the game. The first puzzle I encountered was visually blocked out by green and white vertical lines that cover the entire screen. I thought maybe this was an isolated problem. I was able to get by this one puzzle referring to a walkthrough (kind of ruins it for me). The very next puzzle had a similar problem. I contacted Dreamcatcher and was given a patch to download and install that was supposed to fix the problem. No such luck. I have since been requested to provide some information from my pc and I am waiting for a response. This problem occured with two separate sets of disks. Only some of the puzzles are affected. I think the graphics are great and would love to be able to play this game minus the problems
_____________________

I've done EVERYTHING company has advised over their website, to no avail. It would be REAL NICE to spend this kind of money for some enjoyment and get GRIEF instead. Otherwise, as far as it goes (up until Dragast), it's a pretty nice game. Nice if company did more for quality control.

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