Pastor DisasterJourneyman
Posts : 1056
Joined: 14 DEC 2004
Status : Online | As much as I would love to write a review of Myst IV: Revelation, I am encountering a major dilemma. Some very insightful people with a lot of spare time on their hands have already written some phenomenal reviews of it at this site—not just in the main “Reviews” section but in this forum as well. So what do I do? I loved the game and could rave about all the incredible aspects to it that made it well worth the money spent (both on the game itself and on a new computer & video card to run it), and the time spent to complete it (which turned my beloved into a “Myst widow” for a week). But all I would accomplish by that is to duplicate, mostly in an inferior way, the insights of the reviews already posted.
Instead, I decided to post a few rants about some of the downsides, most of which, I think, have not been stated before. Don’t get me wrong—I would buy this game again in a heartbeat, if for no other reason than the breathtaking visuals! These are only my nitpicky disappointments in an otherwise phenomenal game. So consider this less of a review of Myst IV and more of a contribution to the opinions being collected here regarding the game.
Rant #1: Mapping
Years ago I bought one of the Spyro the Dragon games for my Playstation. I like buying “E”-rated games because I can play them in front of my kids without scarring them for life (I already do plenty of other things to scar them for life). It had a cool feature to it that I thought was rather clever: the Automap. When you entered a new location, the game automatically mapped out any area you actually looked at (so for wider spaces, it was worth taking a moment to spin around 360 degrees). Little did I realize how rare this feature is. The only other time I have seen it is on my old Descent II game. Why can’t adventure games at least offer this as an option?? Fine, don’t give us the whole map up front, but at least save us the effort of having to painstakingly draw diagrams for every world we land in! There were two worlds that I had to sketch out a map of—and boy, was it annoying. First of all, I can’t draw. Okay, if every path went at right angles, maybe I could do it. But when you have paths looping around and curving oh-so-slightly, it means I have to estimate the angle. I mentioned somewhere else on this forum drawing a map for one of the worlds, only to discover I had drawn the same path twice, and at a right angle to itself. Second, I never pick the starting point on the paper correctly. Invariably at some point I run off one edge of the paper only to have an entire half of the page left blank. Grr! Okay, so maybe I’m being a baby about this. Still, the least they could do is offer it as an option if they’re going to have worlds where every node looks virtually identical.
Rant #2: Skipped, due to spoilers
Rant #3: Acting
Now here I just have to say the reviewers are wrong. The acting universally stinks! Okay, when compared to other adventure games (e.g., Myst III), sure it is a lot better. But compare it to even mediocre acting in the movies. What’s the problem—put a person in front of a camera with a green-screen behind them, and suddenly they can’t act?
Dyslexics wonder why there isn't a word that means the same thing as "cinnamon."
|
