If you’re purely a console gamer, then odds are that you probably have not
played an adventure game before. They rarely make appearances on consoles
because their slower pace and cerebral bent don’t translate well to the world
of TV sets and gamepads. If you are a PC adventure gamer, then I’m a little
surprised that you’re reading this review. After all, console gaming is not
really your cup of tea and I can’t imagine that you’d ever play a console
version of an adventure game over the PC version. Anyway, if you were an
adventurer gamer then you’d be intimately familiar with the Myst series of
games. Their imaginative worlds, compelling and original storylines, and
famously fiendish puzzles rightfully earned the Myst games legendary status in
the world of adventure gaming. So now you know that the Myst games are sure to
provide some entertaining, brain challenging gameplay, but what about on
consoles? And specifically, is Myst IV for the Xbox a good game?
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| Myst IV features some beautiful scenery. |
Let’s start by looking at the game’s story and background. Myst IV carries
on the storyline that began way back in the original Myst. Don’t worry, this
does not mean that you will be hopelessly lost, although catching up with the
storyline will involve some extensive reading of journals and you’ll just have
to accept some of the situations at face value. Plus, you’ll just have to
accept the fact that you won’t get all of the references to events in the
prior three games in the series. Anyway, it’s not that it matters that much
after all, since you’ll spend most of your time trying to solve the game’s
puzzles and a puzzle is a puzzle whether or not it has a story behind it. OK,
back to the story at hand. A scientist by the name of Atrus has developed a
way to travel between worlds that exist in other dimensions. While his motives
were purely scientific and exploratory, his sons Sirrus and Achenar saw the
new worlds as places to exploit for riches and power. Atrus has been forced
throughout the series to thwart his sons’ efforts and to imprison them in
special protected ages. Invariably they have a tendency to escape or otherwise
cause trouble, and it is you who Atrus turns to time and again to stop them by
… you guessed it, solving a series of puzzles.
Myst IV on the Xbox does a good job of maintaining the high standards of
the series in terms of graphics and atmosphere. The worlds of Myst IV are at
once beautiful and slightly surreal, familiar yet alien. When you interact
with the characters in the game, they aren’t 3D models, but rather video of
the actors portraying the characters inserted into the computer generated
worlds. The effect is expertly pulled off, at once making the characters
appear very lifelike and very much a part of the world in which they are
supposed to reside. This effect is further enhanced by the high quality of the
acting by all of the actors throughout the game.
The worlds of Myst IV are navigated by moving a screen at a time from one
scene or part of a scene to the next. This is old hat to PC gamers, but will
take some getting used to if you’re only familiar with the free-roaming 3D
worlds found in most video games. Myst IV makes up for this halted form of
movement by giving you a lot of free reign as to where you roam. Some puzzles
will need to be solved before you can get to others of course, but the game
does give you some freedom in your approach. However, moving from one place to
another that are separated by a number of screens can be a slow process as
there is a slight pause between each screen and sometimes there is an even
longer wait for the next screen to load. Movement can also be a bit awkward
when designating the direction in which you want to move. You must manipulate
an on-screen cursor so that it hovers over the direction that you want to move
and then press a button to actually move. This is a pretty innocuous process
on a PC when using a mouse, but is somewhat slow and awkward when using a
thumbstick to move the cursor. Thankfully Myst IV allows you to use a map of
where you’ve been to jump between locations that you’ve visited without having
to retrace all of your steps, but it only works within the current age, and
again, only with places that you’ve already been. Myst IV is going to require
a little patience on your part, and we haven’t even gotten to the puzzles yet.
The interface also suffers from the translation to a console when it comes
to interacting with the screens and puzzles. Some scenes will have interactive
hotspots, such as dials that you can manipulate or objects that you can
examine more closely. However, the only way to find these hotspots is to move
the cursor over them and watch for it to change to a hand holding a magnifying
glass or to a grabbing hand. This involves slowly sweeping each screen with
the cursor looking for these spots … and it is still too easy to miss one.
Once again, score one for the mouse over the controller.
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