Uru: The Path of the Shell Critic Reviews

It's mysterious and satisfying. It fulfills its promise of delivering an immersive, unforgettable journey. It even delivers a few great surprises for old-school Myst nuts. It's an adventure gamer's wet dream.

It's beautiful, hard, smart, and alarmingly engrossing.

Longtime fans will appreciate the new direction that the expansion pack helps to further while adhering to the ambience of the Myst universe.

Offers about seven hours of solid gameplay--give or take an hour--though it suffers from the same problem as Uru: There's no replay value for your $20 once you've completed the game, aside from revisiting your favorite ages and soaking up the scenery again.

Interface problems, relatively brief and inconclusive gameplay, repetitive backtracking, and uneven puzzles detract from your enjoyment.

Still uses the same sucky navigation system/interface. No real surprise. Ubisoft was obviously trying to recoup their expenses from Uru Online and didn't want to spend any more time on development then they had to.

Solving The Path of the Shell without a walkthrough will require endless patience and the ability to brainstorm in four dimensions.

Standalone, The Path of the Shell misses most of what made the original Uru an interesting game to play.

Adds two new main areas for adventurers to explore. But the puzzles found in each are sadistically hard and way too obscure.