"Best-looking Myst to date"

Myst IV: Revelations is easily the best-looking Myst game to date, with by far the most detailed plot and puzzles that are challenging enough to keep you busy for a while. While not everything about the game is perfect, it scores very well in all categories, and will please long-term fans of the series.

GRAPHICS - 10

As I said, this is the BEST looking Myst game to date. Fan favorites like Riven and Exile - no slouches when it comes to pretty scenery - are literally blown out of the water. Leaves bend in the breeze. Animals wander around you. The worlds no longer feel like postcards from another world; they feel as though you're really there.

The only graphical problem has to do with the full-motion video that is integrated into the game. Gamers should by now expect that, in any game with FMV, the video clips will be poorly integrated into the background. In that sense, Revelations is a triumph, because the video only looks out of place *most* of the time. Nevertheless, it's still quite obvious when you're looking at video that's been superimposed over the background.

SOUND - 8

None of the music here really stands out as exceptional, but it doesn't have to. The game is about the graphics; music is only there to set the mood. It does what it was meant to do quite wonderfully. Sound effects, meanwhile, are dead-on. Tap on a peice of paper and it will rustle. Tap on wood, and it sounds like wood. Footsteps sound right on different types of terrain. It's all very immersive and very well done.

Again, the live video is the weak spot for the sound. The simple fact is...most of the people here are just not very good actors. Achenar, the madman from the first Myst, delivers crazed dialog with all the emotion of a mildly perterbed college professor. Yeesha - a new character introduced as a baby in Exile and later appearing full-grown in Uru - is played by a child, and while she really does her best, the role is beyond her (in truth, I doubt any of the people involved could have managed better, given the range of emotion she was saddled with and the leaden performances she was acting opposite of). The only person who performs better is Atrus, who, unless I'm mistaken, has had at least 2 previous games' experience in these matters. Even then, the performance he gives never rises above adequate.

GAMEPLAY - 7

The puzzles in Myst IV have a certain sense of familiarity to them, probably because after 4 entries into the series (5 if you count Uru), there is very little new ground to be broken, puzzle-wise. This is worsened by making the puzzles a good deal harder than in previous installments. Most of the time you'll be flipping switches in one form or another with little to guide you. The logic is often weak, and sometimes, there isn't any to be found - electrical devices in the age of Spire come to mind, which seem to have been designed to function in the least intuitive way possible. Simple logic and trial and error will not be enough to see you through. You will need answer keys to most of the puzzles in the game.

The game does have a help system, which is a good addition in theory. In practice, the help is next to useless. It's broken down into three levels of hints. A level 1 hint is normally either so vauge as to be useless, or else the "hint" it provides is obvious to anyone with a good pair of eyes. A level 2 hint normally explains the mechanics of a puzzle, which can occasionally help, but often a player can figure that much out on their own through simple trial and error. That leaves you most of the time jumping to level 3 hints - answers, handed on a silver platter. It is rare in the extreme for the help to explain the logic behind any puzzles, and what's worse, the answers usually assume that you haven't touched anything - if you have, the sequence you're given may no longer work, leaving you right back at square one and feeling mighty frustrated. This might not be so bad were it not for the maddening tendancy for the puzzles to have no reset button; if you make a mistake, you're often stuck with it. This makes the help at best a mixed bag, and at worse, it actually confuses more than anything.

CONTROLS - 7

Fans of the series will find the controls much the same as in Exile. However, some new changes have been made, most of which, sadly, are negative.

The "hand" navigational cursor in previous games changed instantly whenever it passed over an object that could be manipulated. Now, the hand takes a second to change position, which means you have to be careful not to move too quickly over any area or you may miss "clickable" locations (this gave me problems in at least one location). Also, many papers can now be grabbed and lifted; a neat trick, but you need to position the cursor just right to be able to grab them, so many of these may go unnoticed. Finally, the classic "zip mode" has been changed. Before, zip mode allowed you skip over the long walk between two areas by instantly taking you to the next "important" node along that path. Now, locations are stored as thumbnails, and you can instantly travel to any you like. That would be great, if it weren't for the fact that the thumbnails are so tiny that they can hardly be made out, leaving you in the dark as to which location they link to. Also, the game has a maddening habit of not allowing you to "zip" to any location that is seperated physically from your current location. This is true even if there is a device - and elevator, for instance - that can transport you from the one ton the other. You must climb in and use that device in order to reach the other side so that you can zip to where you want to go.

Not all of the innovations have such hindrances, however. The game finally includes two features which Myst fans have wanted since the first game - an in-game camera and journal. It's no longer necessary to copy notes and symbols by hand. And, of course, if you decide to go sightseeing, you can take some snapshots with you.

OVERALL - 8

While it has its flaws, Myst IV: Revelations has enough strengths to keep fans of the series interested. Newcomers may be daunted by the extensive backstory - but, then again, the 10th anniversary DVD collection of the first three games is still availible, and anyone who likes what they see here can always go back and see where it all began (I strongly recommend playing through the original Myst, which forms most of the backstory for this game - also Riven, which is widely regarded as the best game in the series). Even if you don't understand the plot, you can certainly understand the beautiful scenery - and that's really what a Myst game is all about, visiting strange and fantastic new worlds. Revelations does that wonderfully well.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/07/04