RING

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

You can always rely on Cryo to get some things right in a game.
The game will always look unbelievably beautiful and have at least
some worthwhile puzzles. Sometimes it all gets too obscure as in
"Riven"; Ring is just about right in many respects. But not all.

Wagner's Ring Cycle is undoubtedly one of the major literary and
musical achievements of all time. The 18-hour plot has been argued
to represent the future socialist nirvana of human society and has
equally convincingly been interpreted as the forerunner of all
Freudian theory. That's even before its music is analyzed! To
expect such depth from a game maker is of course foolhardy. It's
been the subject of at least one previous game (The Ring Cycle) in
which Mike Singleton was involved; I never got very far, as I
never worked out what I was supposed to be doing - ever! I'll have
another go if someone can put me on the right footing but for once
the Internet was very silent.

Ring on the other hand is four interlinked adventures. You have to
solve all of them to finish the game but unlike in some other
series each is complete in itself meaning that you don't have to
find object A in story B to solve a problem in world C. It's on 6
CDs but is not that challenging - I think a full walkthrough
excluding the picture puzzles would take about an hour. Each story
is based around a character important to the first two operas in
the Ring Cycle and a sequel based on the last two is being
considered.

It's always interesting seeing what others have found difficult by
looking at published solutions and chat groups on the net. For
many the most difficult puzzle was music one which involves
reproducing the E flat arpeggio on a machine. Can't say this took
me very long, but then I do know the music and am fortunately not
tone deaf.  My struggles were with the picture puzzles - you know
the sort where you have to assemble tiles in the right shape by
pushing them around a fixed area and can only move one at a time.
Some people may enjoy this type of thing - I don't.

I liked it - but it was too short and possibly a tad easy. AND not
all the music is from the Ring Cycle - Cryo apparently didn't know
that Siegfried's Idyll was a birthday present from Wagner for his
son Siegfried and never features in the operas. That's splitting
hairs and perhaps unfair. It's gorgeous to look at and you won't
find a better soundtrack anywhere. By the way the game is inspired
by the Ring plot - it doesn't follow events in the opera except in
a very general fashion.

I might have been more critical if there were many adventures out
at the moment but like RPGs a few years ago those that do appear
need to be cherished. It would be a shame if the genre totally
disappeared and all that was left was glorified arcade that dared
to call itself an adventure because you have to work out that the
blue key opens the blue door ...



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