Aura: Fate of the Ages Review

Puzzle-solving games have never been popular amongst gamers, and I’m certainly a member of the “I’ve never touched one before” club. I was actually, because I finally parted with my hard-earned money after an exhausting deliberation of whether or not to pick up Aura, a Myst-style game from The Adventure Company featuring pre-rendered environments. Though I was hesitant, being only $19.99 I thought why not.

Why so cheap? Well, here’s why:

The opening movie starts the game off with a sputter, complete with cheesy voice acting, amateurish dialogue, and a less than impressive storyline, leaving a bad taste in your mouth for the rest of the game. Thankfully you won’t suffer too much, because the installation process will probably last longer than Aura will on your hard drive. It’s awfully short, even with the time spent analyzing puzzles or exploring your surroundings. You’d expect those three CDs would contain something a little larger, but after playing you’ll be happy it ends so soon.

You’re Umang, chosen by the elders of the secret clan of keepers to travel to parallel worlds to protect four sacred rings from falling into your enemy’s hands. The plot shows presence only twice: once at the beginning and once at the end. The rest is a bunch of loosely connected puzzles and locations classified as a puzzle-adventure (actually, remove the ‘adventure’ since you have no sense of it anywhere in the game). The static worlds you travel to are not even remotely associated, with absolutely no mentioning of any events regarding a story as you progress further. All you seem to be doing is solving a puzzle, unlocking the next one, solving it, going to next location, the end. I was very disappointed because even a poor plot can be developed into something entertaining but Streko-Graphics obviously lacked imagination and decided not to create a story for this game.

Quite lazy behavior, I must say, because thanks to them a perfectly nice engine was put to waste. One of the few things Aura does well is rendering beautiful worlds and machinery. Though you only advance in set intervals and your movement is fixed, it’s evident that a lot of hard work was invested into creating each individual contraption, and just as much in animating it. Every toy you get to play with is fully operational and fluid in motion. But before you’re given the chance to see the end result, intense brain activity is required because you have plenty of confusing, albeit logical devices to figure out and complete. Be warned though, you won’t go far if you approach all of them with trial and error. There isn’t a single puzzle in the game that can be resolved in this manner so you have to be ready and willing to put some thought into them. To ease your frustration a journal has been added, with access to various clues and information about puzzles, which thankfully vary in difficulty, ranging from very simple, to excessively hard.

The horrible voice acting was already mentioned, but at least ambient sound effects are executed in a more professional way. Nothing outstanding, but the game doesn’t aim to be. Puzzles sound authentic whenever you’re using them; music is varied and in sync with the locations. It’s surprising to see such a big contrast between different aspects of the game, and it seems to me the developers spent too much time working in one area and completely overlooked the others.

I always investigate what I spend my money on; Aura was the first blind purchase I’ve ever made, and I received a rather dull introduction to puzzle gaming thanks to it. But the cheap price tag, superb graphics and enjoyable puzzles prevented me from writing naughty emails to the company. If an enthralling story with atmosphere is what excites you give your local library a visit.

The good
- Great looking graphics/animation
- Logical and fun puzzles
- Cheap

The bad
- Uninvolved, uninspired plot
- Static worlds
- No sense of adventure
- Voice acting and dialogue