|
|
 |
Myst IV: Revelation (PC DVD)
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
5/5 |
Fantastical
(May 30, 2008) |
|
I love Myst IV, it's an amazing game and very absorbing. I do find the puzzles hard but having found a website that just gives hints to point you in the right direction, I've been able to solve each puzzle myself. The graphics are incredible and when puzzles are solved and, as in some, a video sequence is triggered, it is truly rewarding and amazing.
I don't like war or battle games and this is the only one of this kind out as far as I've seen. I'm glad they've been brought out to be compatable with Vista as I've got XP on a separate hard drive in order to play this game. I've yet to get Myst V and Uru, both of which are Vista compatable. |
|
|
5/5 |
Amazing... but hard
(May 17, 2006) |
|
I won't lie, I'm terrible at puzzlers, and the later Myst games generally celebrate some of the hardest puzzles in any kind of game.
However, despite needing a walkthrough a fair amount of times throughout the game, the real reward is in some of the most visually dazzling imagery and scenery a game is ever likely to have. Forget Xbox360 and PS3 3D graphics, you can't beat the photo realistic imagery and, most importantly, the highly original and imaginative surroundings in this game.
This followed by a mature and ambient soundtrack echoing through your speakers, this is the closest thing you'll get to virtue reality or going up into space and crash landing in an exotic planet far, far away.
The story begins relatively simple. You, as a close friend of Atrus, a man who can literally create worlds by writing in magic books, have leaves his house and young daughter for you in charge for a short space of time. However, your exploration around his (absolutely stunning) house is quickly put on hold as an earthquake sends you to a short sleep. When you wake up, the young daughter is gone and Atrus is stuck far away, unable to make contact or reach home. It's up to you to find out where the girl is, get her back, and find out the motives of the kidnapper within the pages of Atrus' magical book(s).
Try playing this game at night with the sound up and the lights off and I guarantee you won't get a better interactable experience.
Puzzles on this game are, at first at least, heavily logical. Various hints are left around each location and have been cleverly implemented so that exploration is given meaning instead of just aimless wondering around and getting lost.
You wonder around in first person mode, which heightens the atmosphere and involvement. This is where the surprising amount of detail towards every screen can really be imagined.
Essentially, you're in front of a heavily detailed picture that you can rotate and look around a full 360-degree horizontal and vertical. But what makes this a step forward to games of this kind before is that the pictures are heavily interact-able. You can open shelves, pull levers, flip the pages of books, poke lizards, flip over pillows and butterflies all with the swing of the mouse. You can touch and tap items too - tap a paper pad and it makes a thudding noise. Touch a cup a few centimetres away and it makes a tinkering noise. It's remarkable that so much [meaningless] detail has been made just to involve the audience more than ever before.
Detail has been made to plot development too. If you've never played a Myst game before, don't worry. Using a special necklace that can trace past memories, the simplest objects slowly weave a picture of what has been happening to the characters and in the stories of the past games (as well as bearing more clues).
So what lets this game down? Why hasn't this game sold as much as Grand Theft Auto or Halo? I imagine, simply because of the outrageously hard puzzles. Whilst the first few introductory are relatively easy to pick up, as you pursue forward, hints become more obscure. Later locations including a massive jungle also make backtracking a bit of an issue. There can be pictures staring you in the face that you thought were simply for eye candy but were, in fact, important information to a ludicrously mind boggling puzzled. Basically, this game is too smart.
However, even if it means looking up a players guide for 95% of the puzzles, it's all still worth it for the exploration of the beautiful backdrops. There are 4 unique worlds to explore, all mammoths compared to games before hand.
Don't bother looking up pictures or videos of this game; you really have to experience this game for yourself. But be warned, the puzzles on the journey are incredibly hard. |
|
|
|