Mini review of Obsidian


I would have to characterize Obsidian as "Myst-meets-Dali".  The graphics
are stunning, with a surrealism that takes my breath away.

Graphics:
	Stunning, beautiful, surreal.  The high point of this game.
Music:
	A few good pieces, but mostly irritating because of the small
	snippets that were repeated to the point of nausea.
Character animation:
	Real-life humans (quicktime videos).
	Machines have amazingly good movements.  Almost scary at times.
Plot:
	Not any new concepts or twists, but enough to keep the game
	moving along.
Voices:
	Very good, with the exception of Ceres.  Too much echo added, to
	the point of being unintelligable.
Characters:
	Very good.
Puzzles:
	Some really unique puzzles, certainly not the usual boring set.
Ugly puzzles:
	Some hand-eye coordination required for some puzzles.
Puzzle Difficulty:
	Wide range of difficulty, from easy to almost impossible.
	I am an extremely experienced computer programmer, and still had
	a really tough time with the Church of the Machine puzzle.
	Most of the time, my biggest problem was determing what I was
	supposed to end up with; after that I could solve the puzzles
	easily enough.
Controls:
	Mouse-based, easy to use.
Bugs:
	None.
	I normally wince when I see a game which uses Quicktime as its
	graphics engine, since I expect there to be installation or
	runtime problems.  In the case of Obsidian, everything worked
	perfectly first time.

Pros:
	A Dali-esque landscape of amazing beauty.  Fun just to wander through.
	Bureaucracy segment was a lot of fun.
	Really interesting puzzles, types I have never seen before.
Cons:
	Main "bad-guy" character was rather limited in scope.
	Ending was a pretty big let-down; losing was more fun.
	Some puzzles required hand-eye coordination.
Final Score:
      I am a Myst lover, and I would call this game Myst-like with extra
      character interaction added.  It goes into the top ten list.