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chrissie

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Myst IV

Total Posts: 189

Joined 2010-06-26

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Lol! I must have done because admittedly I had no idea what to frickin do throughout the entirety of the game! And never enjoyed myself because of that! I am an impatient gamer though so each to their own!

     
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Joined 2012-08-27

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Veovis - 22 January 2014 11:07 AM

Yes. Riven is the best game ever ... and Myst IV is a mediocre game at best. Disappointing in all other areas than the graphics. Half an hour into it it felt like a new Riven, but then everything went downhill pretty fast. Puzzle design, plot, voice acting, writing… Just plain bad.

That sums up my opinion too. MIV was lovely to look at, and the beginning was fun, but then I met that awful Spider chair… It just went downhill from there. The feel IMHO, after the first half hour, was more like the Atlantis games than the earlier Myst games, including its fondness New Age-y mystical stuff. IMHO The larger part of the game would have fit very well into the Atlantis multi-verse. I enjoyed several of the Atlantis games, despite their technical issues, so this is not a criticism as much as an observation. It /felt/ like an Atlantis game to me.

Most first adventure games from any new developer tend to be a little clunky, so I try to forgive the less graceful trees when the forest is pretty enough. This was a new team with very little experience with making adventure games. I tried to be patient with the ‘new guys’ on the block but the unforgiving controls and illogical puzzles tested my resolve way too often.

Riven’s intuitive, well-integrated challenges and immersive narrative were so superior that you could only wish the later development team had taken more notes. In truth, the best way to enjoy Myst IV was to forget there was any relationship between this later effort and the first two games.

Yes, I did end up getting and checking the guide to finish Riven. Ironically, I solved a lot of the tougher puzzles. What got me was these 2 doors near the ytram trap that are supposed to close and let you access a pathway. Logically, I’d worked out that the pathway was there, but couldn’t access it. Until I gave up and checked the walk-through (confirming my guess), I just couldn’t get those doors to close while still inside the cave. Go figure

     
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Total Posts: 67

Joined 2005-10-04

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Gonzosports - 16 January 2014 11:35 PM

...but, the puzzles are an absolute perfect example of puzzles not being integrated with the story and feeling like an artificial gameplay construct. They are arbitrary, completely unfair…. The sheer amount of time in the game seems completely forced and artificial as well….completely lacked any real charm or mystery… Anyway, I’m terribly disappointed.

I fully agree. If it weren’t for all this, Riven might have been a good game.

...

Oh, wait, we’re not talking about Riven? My bad.

     
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Total Posts: 70

Joined 2006-05-18

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Terramax - 24 January 2014 06:52 AM

I fully agree. If it weren’t for all this, Riven might have been a good game.

...

Oh, wait, we’re not talking about Riven? My bad.

We definitely have to agree to disagree on this - because when I wrote that, I wrote it as a contrast to Riven. Riven is, with some minor exceptions, the absolute avatar of perfect puzzle-narrative integration. You don’t feel like you’re arbitrarily solving puzzles but actually discovering an alien world, and the puzzles feel completely natural.

I’ll admit nostalgia may cloud my judgment a little, because game mechanics have certainly evolved since then, but thinking about what a revelation the idea that you learn the number system through a school set up for the villagers Gehn has tyrannized* still astonishes me.

I need to play it again, for sure, because it’s probably not as perfect as I remember, but it’s nothing - nothing - like the mimesis-destroying Myst IV.

     

“The ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. And even I grow tired.”
― Harlan Ellison, Stalking the Nightmare

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Gonzosports - 24 January 2014 03:47 PM

Riven is, with some minor exceptions, the absolute avatar of perfect puzzle-narrative integration. You don’t feel like you’re arbitrarily solving puzzles but actually discovering an alien world, and the puzzles feel completely natural.

I’ll admit nostalgia may cloud my judgment a little, because game mechanics have certainly evolved since then, but thinking about what a revelation the idea that you learn the number system through a school set up for the villagers Gehn has tyrannized* still astonishes me.

I need to play it again, for sure, because it’s probably not as perfect as I remember, but it’s nothing - nothing - like the mimesis-destroying Myst IV.

You are wrong. It is not nostalgia. It is still as perfect as you remember it. I replay Riven quite frequently throughout the years and the details in the world - and even in the puzzles themselves are simply unbelievable well made and integrated within the world. I often mention in these threads the animal riddle as the perfect example of such detail. Took me lots of time to figure out the solution, which was a perfectly logical one and based in the explore first - solve later riddle method. Required lots of notes and attention to detail both to what you see and also to what you hear. And there are parts where you can solve them either with some inspiration or with even more reading and attention to detail. I am talking about the part where you have to find out what the first animal is. You can either realize that since no sound is applied, then there must be a no-sound animal (making the fish a strong candidate) or you can read in Gehn’s journal that the small ball was found at the middle of the village’s lake, then travel to another island, use the lens machine to look through the lens in the lake and spot a rock’s shadow that looks identical to a fish. Magnificent. I haven’t noticed the rock’s shadow before my 3rd or 4th replay of Riven.

     

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