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Two Myst IV reviews and the world’s shortest Aura review

Let's start off with C&VG's review of Aura: Fate of the Ages, where they reward it with an appalling 47 out of a 100, in the world's shortest review. It's so short, let me just quote it all here:

 

How do you open a locked door? You find a key, put it in the slot, turn it until the lock clicks and then pull the door handle. Not if you happen to live in an adventure game you don't.

 

To open a locked door in an adventure game, you usually have to first discover the whereabouts of the key by travelling halfway across a bizarre landscape in which

every rock is inscribed with an obscurely enigmatic zodiac symbol. You then embark on twisting a series of differently-shaped levers into a combination that's revealed to you only after looking through a prism at the sun's reflection in a mystical puddle, before putting the key into a completely different door in another building across a lake of fire. You usually then have to enter a combination based on the reverse order of the zodiac symbols seen earlier into an indescribably weird device sitting in an attic, and then turn the door handle backwards. And even then, you usually find the door doesn't lead where you expect it to, and the real one is off round the back somewhere instead, disguised as a daffodil or something.

That's not actually one of the puzzles in obscure logic stretcher Aura: Fate Of The Ages, but it might as well be. It's not all bad. Apart from the acting and character animation. Oh, and the interface. And the story. True, some of the puzzles do make a twisted kind of sense. But there's nothing gripping about it. Life's too short, basically.

 

If you want to read this same text with a blue background and white text, go here.

Next up is a more juicy review by GameZone of Myst IV: Revelations, where they give it an overall score of 9.0:

 

Myst IV is a graphical treat. The pre-rendered environments look amazing, each of them a beautiful representation of Myst’s atmosphere. The scenes have little sections of activity, like running water down a waterfall and objects that become blurry when not being focused on when you look away from them. Interspersed within the game are full motion videos of the people that you meet and interact with. These videos look remarkably well and are very high quality, no doubt a benefit of the game shipping on two DVD-ROMs. There’s a lot to look at in Myst VI, as it truly is a beautiful game.

 

Read the full review here.

And last but not least, a Myst IV review over at Game Connect Magazine. The four-page review concludes with a perfect score of 10:

 

Like the original Myst, Myst IV: Revelation represents a crossroads of the gaming world. Like its predecessor, it utilizes a medium that had yet to be properly made use of, coming as it does on two DVDs, both full to the brim of incredible graphics and sound. And, like its predecessor, it represents a gaming experience that no one should be without, by virtue of the masterfully crafted balance of dynamism, storyline and atmosphere it delivers.

 

More of this can be found here.

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