I first played Riven in late 1997 soon after it came out and it and the original Myst and Myst III Exile became the benchmarks for quality adventure gaming for all subsequent games that I played. During the pandemic, I watched the entire 40 seasons of Survivor which included many scenes of beautiful beaches with turquoise water and I was frequently reminded of that great lagoon scene in Riven. So, after 24 years I was inspired to return to the game that has always been among my top 3 AGs.
I first played Riven using the original 5 CD version with its tedious CD-swapping. Subsequently, I got the 1997-8 DVD version, but never installed it. Today, I tried installing the DVD version on a laptop running WinXP, but it crashed to the desktop at startup. So I decided to consider the GOG version even though I had read about installation problems with it in the past. Even though I’ve purchased 25+ games from GOG I haven’t been on the site for a few years. It turns out that they are having a sale and Riven was available for an unbelievable $2.39!
I was pleased to find that Riven could be downloaded directly without using the GOG Galaxy app. I installed it on a small Sony Vaio (11 inch screen) laptop with a modest 1.2 gHz CPU running Win7. With the only tweaking being a right-click on the Riven shortcut and selecting Windows XP SP3 Compatibility, I started Riven and it ran like a charm. There was perfect stereo sound, smooth cutscenes and the brightly clear scenery I fondly remembered. The GOG version apparently runs under ScummVM which you’re only aware of because of a momentary title screen on startup. Also, there is no apparent sign of a need for QuickTime although I do have version 6.5 installed.
Within moments of entering the game, I was riding the Tram and soon after, the underground roller-coaster/railway. That alone was more than worth $2.39!
Highly recommended!
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