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RealMyst
Click on box
cover above, to order
Many people love to flame Myst.
Others think that any game that sells like hotcakes must never be
insulted, as if that's some kind of unwritten law. These are the two very
distant, polarized camps of Myst fans and flames; a game
that has sold around 8 million copies, yet has equally become
"fashionable to hate." Few dare to speak any differently, one
way or another...except perhaps me.
Not to sound like I'm straddling the fence, though I'm somewhere in
between. I admit, Myst had one of my choices for Worst Adventure Game
Endings of All Time, and the movement was limited, and there
was annoyingly no inventory to speak of, and it is visibly absent from my
choices of 50 Best Game Classics of
all Time. However, it was still a marvel of technology in 1993, and a good
preview of the CGI effects yet to come in movies, TV, and games. It's
hardly fair to claim that it only sold, as one popular webzine put it,
because "bad games sell if they're marketed properly." In fact,
when I first bought the game for my Macintosh Centris in '93, I don't
think I saw a single commercial advertisement for it at all.
This alludes to something you may not know about the background for Myst;
it was originally sold on the Macintosh computer system, not the
PC. The two brothers who created Myst formerly made games for their young
children, using what at the time was a popular, user-friendly Macintosh
programming engine called Hypercard. The resulting two children's games, Manhole
and Cosmic Osmo,
received rave reviews. They allowed kids to point and click their way
through a whole world of interactive objects: fairy tale land objects in Manhole,
and outer space gizmos in Osmo. By 1993, they
came out with Myst; an apparent answer the plea for an exploration game
for adults. Then the game was ported to PC...and the rest is history.
While this is a slightly overdone abbreviation of the background to Myst,
it is far more accurate --and in opposition-- to all the negative rumors hovering
over Myst in the recent past. It was hardly intended as a "bad"
game that was sold to people merely with a clever marketing campaign. It
was hardly single-handedly responsible for changing adventure games for
the worse. It wasn't even the first "dreaded," mouse-interface
adventure game (that honor goes arguably to Sierra's King's
Quest V, years before Myst was even a glint in the Ryan
brothers' eyes). If anything, this was the game that inspired the dawn of
exclusive, CD-ROM-only adventures, like 7th
Guest and Jewels of
the Oracle...and to me that's a very good thing. It is also a
game that, like it or not, should be played by one and all at least
once. No joke: at the extreme least, and like it or
not, playing Myst
is a rite of passage into PC gaming.
Jump ahead 7 years, to a new decade in
gaming. "Rail movement" games
are dead. People no longer want to be told that you can only go where the
game designer wants you to. They have been spoiled by 3D games galore,
with full X, Y, and Z freedom of movement. It only makes sense that the
makers of Myst would want to upgrade their classic game --a
"director's cut," so to speak-- and allow similar
maneuverability within the original realms of Myst. In real
Myst, they've done just that, and many should be quite pleased.
You can walk the full length of all worlds, without a care in the world,
and look up, down, and all around, in any area of the lands you choose to
go to. There's even an "improved
ending," where you get to see a new realm called "Rime,"
which links the original 1993 game storyline more fluidly with the 1997 sequel, Riven.
However, there is a setback. While the original was a revolution in
game design --and arguably the spark that initiated CD-ROM gaming itself--
this game seems to be taking several steps backward, just to keep up with
modern technology. The 3D worlds here are identical to the original CGI
visions of the 1993 game, and perhaps that's half the problem; modern
games have met and exceeded these visuals, via third generation (or even
later) graphics accelerator cards. From the majestic ballroom of Vampire:
The Masquerade, to even simple video games like Space
Channel 5, modern game graphics are several leaps and bounds
ahead of what was shown in the original Myst, even when
upgraded to modern 3D.
There's a lot of reasons for my final rating of "Small
Crater" (i.e. "marginal thumbs up" to newcomers at
Techtite.com). On the one hand, the game still stands as a staple of
adventure gaming, yet there are other limitations to consider. For one
thing, the minimal requirements for the game are silly. Explain them any way you wish, though in layman's terms it will
always seem silly that a 3D version of a 7 year old game has requirements more advanced than even Deus Ex
or Unreal Tournament. What's
more, unlike those two games, the requirements for the Mac version are
ridiculous (so ridiculous, the Mac version's release date has yet to even
be announced, as of this review's posting). If you ask me, 360 degrees or
not, I'd just as soon replay the original version of the game, or the
hi-resolution Masterpiece Edition. However, for owners of a
powerful PC, this is a great amusement...presuming you're not a member of
"hate Myst" fan club.
Click
box cover (shown here) to order this game
| All text, Title
graphics, and pix not of reviewed product, are created by Techtite,
copyright 2000; all rights reserved. Miniature scan of this game's
box cover art is used only for the purpose of review, and by
no means represent any affiliation with Techtite and the distributors
of that product. For further "legalese" & disclaimers,
click here... |
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Burnout
Near
Miss
Small
Crater
Large
Crater
Deep
Impact
