Aura: Fate of the Ages (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.4 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Scott Osborne
• Reviewed on: 07/15/2004
• Released on: 06/29/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: Aura: Fate of the Ages (PC) Review

If you want a good adventure game, don't play Aura: Fate of the Ages. It's not that this so-called adventure game is bad; in fact, in some ways it's pretty good. It's just that it lacks most of the vital hallmarks of the adventure genre. From the early Infocom text adventures to modern classics like The Longest Journey and Syberia, the genre at its best has focused on gripping stories, memorable characters, and richly imagined worlds. Above all, the best adventure games have provided a true sense of adventure, making you feel like your in-game avatar is really doing something unique and vital and exciting. Aura makes the big mistake of merely giving lip service to those elements, while instead focusing almost entirely on an arbitrary collection of elaborate, tough puzzles. When taken strictly as a puzzle game, though, Aura often succeeds admirably, challenging you with one fiendish brain-twister after another.

Aura is a Myst III clone that has you hopping between linked fantasy worlds that each has its own look and feel. Unlike Myst III, Aura's story and characters are forgettable, amateurish fluff that seems to have been cobbled together as an afterthought. It's a bit of muddled, woefully underdeveloped nonsense about a group of "Keepers" who guard a set of sacred rings and can cross through parallel realities. Combining the rings can grant enormous power, and one of the Keepers has rebelled to seek ultimate power for himself.

You play as Umang, a bright student of the Clan of Keepers. You only see the forgettable Umang during a few boring, tacked-on cutscenes. The game itself is played strictly from a first-person perspective, and you rarely meet other characters during gameplay. The ones you do meet are simple cardboard cutouts with no sense of personality or realistic motivation.

As such, playing Aura doesn't give any feeling that you're an adventurer thwarting a grave threat to existence. Rather, you're simply plopped down into alien landscapes and have to solve a bunch of arbitrary Rube Goldberg puzzles that are strewn about. Aura will likely send adventure game novices--and veteran fans who appreciate story, character, and ambience over puzzle work--running for the hills as soon as it starts. During the opening segment, the only thing resembling a story or character comes in the form of a little note you pick up--and an uninteresting one at that. Otherwise, you're just left on your own to figure out a bunch of complex, interrelated alien machines scattered in and around a house.

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