I was a bit skeptical about Myst IV after the debacle that was Myst URU, but I'd heard that Cyan had gone back to fundamentals and had produced a game that would please old and new fans of the series. Though I've been perhaps especially critical of the past games, I must admit too having liked Myst IV immensely. Let's call it a "flawed masterpiece," for, while the game represents a pinnacle of first-person adventure games, I can't honestly ignore its problems--which mostly boil down to a few puzzles requiring non-intuitive mouse input.
First, though, I'll acknowledge what Cyan did right with this game. The graphics are even better than I expected, and given Cyan's innovations in this often over-emphasized factor of computer games, that says a lot. Graphically, the game even triumphs over Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. The leaves flutter, the water ripples, clouds move, wildlife--er, exists. The atmosphere ranges from deep jungle to icy caverns. It's varied and immersive; exploring these worlds is a great deal of fun, and they're not so immense that you can't keep your bearings (as in Rhem or even Riven.) The sounds are also dead-on. Surprisingly, though I've always praised Cyan for their exquisite music, I'm ambivalent this time. There are a lot of vocals in the background, and the music often seems at odds with the atmosphere generated by the graphics. I had to turn it off for levels involving sound puzzles, and decided to leave it off. There's enough aural ambience in the game to make the music superfluous anyway.
The interface is similar to Exile, though there have been improvements. I think it makes the most sense to describe the setup here in terms of camera movement. You can move the "camera" 360 degrees and even up and down; you have a complete sphere of movement. There are also some spots that can be zoomed in on. However, movement forth and back is rather like picking up the camera and moving to the next "shot." In essence, each "world" is composed of so many vantage points, some of which can only be accessed after solving puzzles or finding work-arounds. In a few transitions, an animation plays ostensibly showing your cameraman moving up stairs and the like.
The cameraman analogy is also fitting because of some "extras" Cyan added. Cyan first experimented with a built-in "screen grabber" in Uru, but they perfected this tool for Revelation. You can take a picture of almost anything, but this time you can annotate your pics (or make blank pages of notes.) I'd gotten into the habit of grabbing screen shots while playing Rhem, and found the setup quite natural. It's great to be able to go back through your pics and notes when stumped.
Another improvement was with the "zip" tool, which was also present in earlier Myst titles. In Riven, for instance, you'd occasionally get a lightning bolt mouse cursor which meant you could "zip" instantly to another location. This might happen on a long catwalk, for instance--"zipping" would let you skip all the in-between vantage points and get right to the doorway. In Revelation, you are allowed to zip to three pre-selected "zip" points once you visit them (and provided they aren't blocked by a closed door or the like). It reduces backtracking somewhat, but I'm feeling a bit spoiled. Why? Because I would have rather been allowed to set my own "zip" points--and had more than three! Though helpful, the pre-selected points weren't ever quite where I wanted them to be. They relieved some backtracking tedium, but could have virtually eliminated it.
The characters here are also very sharp and, for the most part, well acted. Storylines typically don't interest me very much, particularly in games of this type, so I'll let you find out about Achenar and Sirrus somewhere else. Suffice it to say, the brothers are back, and it's your job to undo their sabotage without ever confronting them directly.
What's interesting is how this story is presented to the player. Though there are "cut scenes" featuring live-action, most of the story is presented mise-en-scene--i.e., you infer things about the characters by the things you find and see on the screen, such as drawings, cobbled-together objects, sculptures, etc. You also find books and letters. There is also another rather interesting narrative technique employed here--a "dream amulet," which becomes active in certain locations. Clicking on the glowing amulet reveals a quick cut-scene rather like a dreamy flashback. For instance, zooming in on Sirrus' sculpture of his family and clicking the amulet plays a snippet of dialogue that represents (I suppose) what Sirrus was thinking when he carved it. Thus, using this handy amulet, the player learns about the various intruiging objects he comes across. The "memory amulet" is an insightful way to give the player "background" without forcing a disruption. Inevitably, though, the clues provided by the amulet turn out to be absolutely critical.
This last point brings me to the negative. Getting through Myst IV requires an almost inhuman attention to detail. The steep difficulty takes a lot of the fun out of the game, because you find yourself scrutinizing every centimeter of every scene for some vital clue on a scrap of paper lying on the ground or stuck in a crack in a wall. One particularly difficult level involves keeping track of three different details about five locations: the type of animal you find there (which might only be ascertained by matching up footprints), the sound it makes, and the symbol on the nearby totem pole. This is a lot of data to bring to a puzzle that rather anti-climactically results in the lowering of a small bridge.
Some of the other puzzles are simply "obstructionist," to use the term Brenda Laurel uses to describe puzzles whose existence serves only to prolong the gameplay. One of these involves a set of hammers and sliders. There are virtually no clues to help you; it's really just a matter of trial and error, and when you get it right, you wonder why you wasted the time to solve it instead of just looking at a walkthrough. There are plenty of other puzzles like this. One rather difficult and tedious puzzle is actually repeated twice, back-to-back, and is sure to give all but a true diehard an excuse to check the hints.
I think it's safe to say that almost every puzzle in Myst IV can be solved with enough patience, attention to detail, and logic. One, involving four monkeys and a cheetah (well, rather animals like monkeys and cheetahs), is time-consuming but simply brilliant. My wife and I worked out the logic of the puzzle and were quite satisfied when our solution worked. There were several other puzzles of this type; difficult, perhaps, but not unreasonable--and always rewarding.
My biggest complaint about this game concerns some puzzles that require non-intuitive mouse movement. The puzzle I have in mind concerns a snake wrapped around a wheel (and jamming it). The clues indicate that you should "pet" the snake at a certain point and in a certain direction. Yet how you're supposed to communicate this to the avatar is baffling. The mouse cursor doesn't change, and all you can seem to do is "tap" on the snake. I quickly grew frustrated and checked hint sites. Needless to say, the whole thing was poorly implemented and rather stupid.
The worst interface problem, though, involves some wheels that produce musical tones. Getting it right involves rotating the wheels in the right order, for the right duration, and with virtually no silent time in between. Success requires precise timing and flawless mouse manuevering. In a word: Difficult. In two words: 4@$#@ difficult. And also completely out of place. I read that Cyan had released a patch to ease the difficulty of these "timed" puzzles, but it must not have been included in the "update" I downloaded.
Cyan obviously knew their game was maddeningly difficult and included a built-in set of hintmaps. Unfortunately, these hints only come in three ways: Vague to the point of useless, reasonably helpful, and the answers spelled out. There aren't enough of the "reasonably helpful," though, and I don't appreciate having the answers given to me. I ended up just using UHS as usual.
To sum up my thoughts about Revelation: It's a brilliant game with a few serious, but not ruinous, flaws. It represents what will probably be the best of the Myst series, though I'm still waiting to see what happens with Myst V, the final chapter.
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