Myst IV: Revelation

Little warning first, you'll want to use the fan-made patch that fixes the very long loading screens! [url=https://github.com/tomysshadow/M4Revolution/releases]https://github.com/tomysshadow/M4Revolution/releases[/url] Myst: IV Revelation is probably the most uneven in the series. Beautiful graphics, impressive production value, lots of actors, many cutscenes, Ages full of life and great art direction, and an amazing, [i]amazing[/i] soundtrack by Jack Wall. The story is a letdown for some people; but although it's a little bit campy at the end I think it's pretty good overall. The main issue lies with the puzzles which are often frustrating, too difficult, and do not really make sense in the context of the story. Even with the frustration, I still love this game and its characters and never skip it when I'm replaying through the series.

Uh... Just no. I got to a part where you are supposed to translate book titles by hand based on blurry images that are rotated sideways. No thanks. This is way worse than all previous Myst games. It was unforgiveable. They knew it was bad and there is a Prima™ guide built into the game as an answer to the bad design. I had some issues with some of the puzzles in previous Myst games, but this one just got too monotonous. This is a game where you are going to want to go full walkthrough from start. So far the problem I have with the puzzles is not that they are confusing, it's that once you figure them out they are monotonous. I don't want to spend forever writing translations for letters in an alphabet where I have to use a reference just to look up what the letter is, and on top of that all the letters look too similar. I'm not even spoiling anything. This is like the third puzzle in the game. It still feels like it's part of the tutorial at this point. Unless you are set on completing the Myst series, just pass on this one.

This is the worst - by far the worst - of the Myst series as far as I am concerned. The first part of the game was pretty enjoyable, but the closer I got to the end the more tedious the tasks became and had nothing to do with cognition, but rather a grim determination to complete tasks that were bordering on near impossibility due to a combination of poor color definition and a problem with cursor control that made a lot of the tasks hit or miss at best. I would literally do tasks 10, 20 or more times before it would 'register' as being correct even though on the face of it I was doing the exact same thing every time. Extremely frustrating and did not reflect anything like the amount of effort required to complete the game. In fact, I reached the end of my patience and finally gave up at the final tasks. It isn't like I have a tin pot PC or something - take a look at my specs. To top it all off I spent a couple of days 'fixing' a problem with the game crashing at onset until I finally resolved it by switching on HDR in my display specs. HDR???? Makes no sense to me as the game is hardly high def, but it actually resolved the problem. Not worth the effort.

I couldn't really get into this one. The beginning drags quite a lot and honestly made me more bored than anything. The pendant mechanic was also really unfun and kind of went against the appeal of Myst as a series to me. Myst strives on it's environmental storytelling, so having these audio log style mechanics broke my immersion, quite a lot. The puzzle design isn't as strong. And this might just be me, but I actually think this game looks worse than previous installments. It has its moments, but I was pretty disappointed, overall.

Art design, nailed it Sound design, nailed it Story, sorta ok Gameplay design, failed it

Humorously bad puzzles with a catastrophic control scheme and a story that is as cheesy as it is nonsensical. Could be fun to screw around in but not to solve organically.