Myst V review
The review is a good one, but I was surprised to see 4/5 stars. Tom King seemed to be aggravated a good deal of the time from the review. I guess he liked it overall.
There is one place where he refers to the Bahro as "standing prone". Since prone means to be laying face down, I had no idea what was meant here. "prone (prōn) adj. Lying with the front or face downward. Having a tendency; inclined: paper that is prone to yellowing; children who are prone to mischief. adv. In a prone manner: The patient was lying prone on the bed." I'm a nurse who uses the terms prone and supine (face down and face up) very frequently in work, but I looked it up to see if there was some meaning I don't know, but I didn't find any. Lynsie |
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"By helping you in this way, the Bahro act as the intercessors in puzzle resolution. This is a masterstroke idea, whose implementation can unfortunately be a little frustrating."
"In the two examples mentioned earlier, the Bahro also take your slate and return it to the nearest pedestal, leading the player to feel that these creatures are less inclined to render assistance than they are concerned about their tools lying about the landscape. This forces you to travel back to retrieve them once again; thus the hindrance. I can only guess the developers planned this as a sort of attenuated obstacle, but it's uselessly frustrating, and served little purpose but to force a muttered expletive from me each time it happened. At other times, you will have to track down your slate again because you've unintentionally dropped it, as apparently the stranger is rather uncoordinated, and can't hold a small rock slate and turn a door handle at the same time. Having said that, the puzzle implementation felt organic and relevant, within a game that requests the player to involve him or herself emotionally as well as intellectually." "And at one point a Bahro took my dropped slate but failed to carry out what my crude drawing required, standing prone as though he'd had a particularly frightening epiphany that rooted him to the spot, forcing an exit and some backtracking." I've highlighted the places I meant. Lynsie |
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I would say: Average graphics, unimpressive music, unintersting characters, average controls, doesn't add anything to the story (but I haven't finished it yet, so that's just my impression after 3 quarter or more of the game). |
Well, those slate issues listed just strike me as secondary nuisances (or in the last case quoted, a bug). In an otherwise good game, such annoyances tend to stand out more, because it yanks you out of enjoying the game, so they need to be mentioned. But it's not like he's saying the puzzles themselves are poor. The review is generally fairly positive about those.
I've probably harped on a lot more about a lot less and still given games 4 stars. :D Our 4-star rating is described as "a game of very high quality. Although some aspects might have been executed better, we would recommend this game to any adventure gamer without hesitation." I mean, really we have to explain the parts that might have been executed better. Quote:
I thought the controls were fantastic, though. Not that any one option does things better than any other game, necessarily, but I don't know of another game that offers that kind of range. And actually, no, I lied. I don't think I've seen a node movement game that handled its scene transition that well, either. I was really impressed. |
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The controls are much better than Uru, but not as good as in Sentinel, in my opinion, ie: not very responsive, as far as movement is concerned, and not that intuitive, especially with the slate. Nothing dire, but nothing great either, in my eyes. And I'm not sure what you mean with "that kind of range"... |
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I'm guessing that by "prone," Tom meant "standing still." Since "lying prone" is often used as a cliché for when people are knocked out or unconscious, it would be easy to get the impression that it simply means "motionless."
I don't think I explicitly knew the definition for the word until now, but my intuition would fall somewhere between the two. (I probably wouldn't write "lying prone," but I didn't react when I read it, either.) |
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And the comment that KOTOR, Morrowind and Psychonauts feature idle animations etc. "automatically" sounds kind of degrading to their developers who spent months of their lives on implementing it. But I suppose that's not how you meant it. ;) |
By idle animations I meant that whatever characters/creatures/flora do on their own when you're not interacting with them. For example, two NPCs carrying on a conversation until you come up and ask them for directions. A flock of birds feeding until you approach and they fly away. Even things like smoke billowing form chimneys, insects, and passing clouds.
Sound is also a crucial element. I remember in realMyst how alive it felt primarily because of all the ambient sounds of water, rain, toads, and whales. Walking through those Ages I never felt them to be empty and lifeless, just merely empy of life like people and large animals and bustling towns. |
I understand the significance of it all, but my point is that even in the screenshots, which are devoid of these little touches by definition, the game looks less compelling that eg. Fahrenheit (IMO), which leads to the conclusion that the graphics itself may be not that good as well (again, obviously, IMO).
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It's definitely possible to scale up the graphics to the quality of HL2 or SC:CT, but Cage and Atari must have thought the number of potential audience would be severely cut down. |
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What mesmerize me is why they would make one incredibly compelling world, with a huge planet hanging in a beautiful night sky, and 4 other barely average worlds, among which a cardboard beach + sewer. :crazy: |
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