Introduction

Ever
since the Uru debacle,
Myst fans have been anxious to see just what Ubisoft would do with
the next true Myst sequel. What Cyan Worlds did was to license
the project
out to Team Revelation (called “TR” throughout the rest
of this review), a
group of talented developers who work for Ubisoft, Montreal. Cyan
Worlds
helped with the story to assure continuity and Rand Miller continued
his
role as Atrus. But it was TR which the fans now had to wait for. Some
waited with bated breath while others just
waited with worms on their tongue. But wait they did until now. Now
the waiting is over and I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that
Ubisoft has listened to the community and created a game with the
Myst fan expressly in mind.

The bad news is that Ubisoft
has listened to the community and created a game with the Myst
fan expressly in mind.

But
despite a few quirks, which would seem totally natural to the Myst
community, Ubisoft has created an excellent game. In fact,
they have raised the bar and have established a new state of the
art. The rest of the industry must now catch up. Again.

Just two warnings before you run out and buy this game: First, it
comes on two DVDs so you will need a DVD player. Second, you will need a highly advanced graphics card to run the game. See the System
Requirements section at the end of this review for details.

Story

I was in a bit of a quandary over just what to say about the story.
The box says almost nothing about the plot and the UbiSoft site dutifully
reprints the silence. So what could I say without spoiling any surprises?
Well, the Official Myst IV web site offers a demo that gives a bio
on all the main characters. Also, the basic plot is handed to you
during the game’s intro before play even begins. No surprises there,
so I think I can safely limit myself to what is said in the intro.

Most people who are reading
this review are probably familiar with the original Myst. In it,
a man named Atrus and his wife Catherine
are able to write fantastic books with the ability to transport people
to the worlds they describe, called “ages.” But their
two sons are more interested in conquest and plunder then they are
in the science of writing. The sons kidnap their own mother as bait
to lure their father into a trap. Once caught, the sons are free
to wreak havoc on the ages their father wrote. Their genocidal terror
was stopped only when their greed caused them to examine the two “special” books
their father had written. The books looked like tempting targets,
but were actually prisons designed to catch greedy thieves. And this
is where Myst begins, with everyone locked away in their own prisons
and only you left to figure out who to trust and who to release.

Many years have passed and the boys are still in their prisons.
Catherine frets over her sons and wants to release them, but Atrus
is not so sure that they have repented or are safe to return to society.
He asks for your objective opinion and so begins Myst IV.

The story is marvelously interwoven with the game. As you explore
the prison worlds you learn more about what has happened to the boys
through their writings and achievements. You also learn a little
more about what happened to people and places from the other Myst
games. But most important is the environment. Every hut, every artifact
tells its own story as to the ethical health of the son who made
it.

There are no tricks here, no red herrings. Everything can be taken
at face value. What would you say about the boy who made a wind chime
from bamboo? What about the one made from bones? It is like C.S.I.
for the psychologist. The consistency and attention to detail is
refreshing.

There is much more to
the story than just a psych profile, but I must not spoil the rest
for you. This is, however, where one of the
Myst Fan Quirks pops up.

Let us say, just for example, that a fire should break out in the
house. Your Average Adventure Gamer would then drop everything and
search franticly for a fire extinguisher. But a Myst Fan knows that
the way to overcome any crisis is to patiently explore each age and
solve all the puzzles. I found this disconcerting. I wanted to save
the day, but found myself exploring and pondering bizarre machinery.

But even if you have never played any of the other Myst games, the
stories and subplots in Myst IV are universal. Everyone should be
able to relate to the events, even if they don’t know the history
of the characters.

And it even has a fully developed ending. The whole story was obviously
scripted from the beginning and the ending was given just as much
detail as the intro. If you have played any three adventure games,
then I don’t have to tell you how unusual this has become.

The story is compelling,
unfolds during play and holds your interest to the end. I give
it an “A-”.

Navigation

This
is one of the two areas where Ubisoft has broken previous boundaries
and set a new standard in gaming.

The engine is 3D slide
show. It is a slide show because you jump from specific location
to specific location – you can’t just
go to any pixel you want. It is 3D because at each location you can
pan around 360 degrees in all three dimensions.

The cursor is a beautifully animated 3D hand that gracefully moves
from idle to pointing, to grabbing, to whatever the hotspot would
indicate. It is translucent (and you can set just how translucent
it is) and normally stays pegged to the center of the screen while
the rest of the world pans under it.

A simple right-click changes modes and the world stays still so
your cursor can move around on the screen. This is most useful for
getting down to the bottom of the screen where the camera and viewer
are. In this mode the cursor changes perspective as you move it around
the screen. Move it over to the left and it starts pointing to the
left. This really adds to the feel that it is your hand still attached
to you.

But even your idle hand
is not idle. In addition to looking and listening, Ubisoft
has given you the ability to “tap” on
anything close to you. No hotspots needed, just click on anything
interesting. Tap on the desk and you get a nice “Thunk, Thunk.” Tap
on glass and you get a “Clink, Clink.” Tap on the dragonfly
and it flies away. Most people I’ve spoken with wasted five minutes
playing with the first bucket of water they found. The amount of
effort put into making each detail correct is just amazing.

What is there to criticize?
Well, a couple of things. First, slide show engines just aren’t
appropriate for mazes – there is no
way to keep your orientation. One of the ages is set in a jungle
atmosphere with twisty little paths running through it (see the screen
shots). The whole age amounts to a maze. I kept getting lost and
turned around, finally having to map the place with pen and paper
just to get through it.

Second, everyone (Okay, two other people) I have spoken with who
have played the game found the Grabbing hand to be frustrating. You
float the cursor over a hotspot and the hand opens up to grasp it.
You place the open hand right over the knob and click. The hand then
goes Tap, Tap. Huh? It seems that you have to aim a little low to
actually grasp the object. This is counter-intuitive as it looks
as if you are going to miss. Now imagine dealing with this quirk
in a timed puzzle. I can still hear the cries of anguish from my
son.

Ubisoft almost nailed
the navigation in this one. That in itself would have earned them
an A. Adding the innovation of Tapping also
puts them in A country. But the frustration of the mis-aligned Grasping
Hand dragged their score down. Still, they fully deserve an “A-” for
navigation.

Puzzles

The puzzles lie fully
within the Myst tradition. They are all of the Logical variety
with no Inventory puzzles to be found. The puzzles
are complex and interconnected – you frequently must solve
one puzzle before another is activated.

I would classify the puzzles
as difficult. In many cases too difficult for me to figure out.
There are hints scattered all over the ages,
but they are ambiguous and difficult to identify. After reading a
walkthrough to find out what the goal was of a certain puzzle, I
was able to look back and say, “Yes, I can see now how that
little drawing in the journal pointed to this as the solution. But
I also saw that other drawing which seemed to point to a different
solution. And another drawing which implied a third.”

Judging from the discussions on the forums, this is just the level
of difficulty preferred by Myst Fans. I am not as sure about the
Average Adventure Gamer. But I am sure about me and I personally
found many of them too difficult to solve without a walkthrough.

This level of difficulty could have been mitigated by an in-game
hint system. And Myst IV has one! Too bad it isn’t useful. There
were two times where I could not figure out what the goal of a certain
puzzle was. Just tell me what the pattern is and I’ll figure out
how to get it there. So I went to the in-game system that offered
three hints:

1) There is a clever puzzle here. (no kidding!)
2) The puzzle has a lot of buttons and levers. (yes, I can see that.)
3) Push this button, then that lever, then this lever…

Two things wrong with
this. First, it never gave me a hint that would actually nudge
me towards the solution. And second, the actual
solution given was only good if the puzzle was left exactly the way
you found it. If you had played with the puzzle at all, then the “solution” was
worthless. The pieces just weren’t in the right places anymore. And
there was no puzzle reset. So off to the Internet to find a walkthrough.

But the puzzles were consistent.
I know there is one community of players who will love them. I
know there are others who will be totally
lost. Averaging it all together using my private arcane algorithm,
I give the puzzles a solid “B”.

Graphics

Myst IV simply has the best graphics ever seen in an Adventure Game
to date.

One
of the complaints frequently heard by Ubisoft is that the beautiful
graphics in their previous works were flat. They were more
like paintings than 3D environments. Ubisoft has done an unbelievable
job in opening up the background.

The first thing you will
notice is that they have added “Depth
of Field.” This says that you can only focus on one thing at
a time. Move your cursor over the far mountains and the nearby bushes
get fuzzy. Move your cursor over the bushes and the mountains go
out of focus. This is more like how your eye works and goes a long
way to removing the flat painting effect. You will, however, need
the latest graphics card to use this. My gForce4 MX 440 could not
handle it, but I was able to play the game with that option turned
off. See the System Requirement below.

The second thing you will notice is that everything is alive and
in motion. Not only are the clouds in motion, but there are multiple
layers of clouds making them far more realistic. Vegetation moves
and jerks with breezes and gusts. Each leaf moves independently.
And the bush on the other side of the canyon is just as active as
the bush next to you. The water effects are breathtaking.

But it is the work done on animals that is truly unbelievable. Frogs
jump. Insects swarm. There are birds flying way out there in the
background. You can follow one as it flies all the way up to you,
perches, pecks at food, fluffs its feathers, cocks its head at you
and, well, just acts like a real bird before flying back out. There
are monkey-like things that act like monkeys. There are large two-legged
lizard things which move like nothing you have seen before, but which
are totally believable. You could name each creature and track them
through the age. They are curious and watch you. Sometimes following
you. Sometimes running away if you approach.

Ubisoft has created entire eco-systems and done it better than
anyone else in the industry.

So, what do you give a
developer when they do something that has never been done before
and nail it to the wall? It is the only situation
I can thing of for awarding an “A+.”

Sound

Just beautiful. Wind blew, birds chirped, feet scuffled as you turned.
Stereo kept everything in the right place, moving as you moved. Plus
everything you tapped sounded just like you would expect. That took
a lot of effort.

Voice acting is excellent. I loved the personality it brought to
the characters.

Music was excellent. It set the mood. It fit the environment. It
even used pieces from the original Myst on those occasions where
you meet up with the sons.

When Cyan Worlds got Peter
Gabriel to write a piece for Uru, they made a big deal out of it.
But the music didn’t quite fit the game
and they relegated the piece to the radio sitting beside Zandi’s
trailer. Well, they got Mr. Gabriel to do another piece for Myst
IV and this time it is so appropriate that they have given the piece
its own music video within the game. We can only hope that Ubisoft
will include the entire video when they finally release the soundtrack.

Sound gets a well deserved “A.”

Immersion/Addiction

The thing which struck me most about the original Myst was its ability
to immerse you in its world. You played the game exactly the same
way you would have acted had you been there in real life. Soon I
was into the game and the real world no longer existed. Myst IV comes
close, but it is still too much of a game to get lost in.

I mentioned about the conflict with wanting to face the emergency
but having to solve puzzles. There were other places where I would
have liked to have done one thing, but the game demanded that I do
another. This is not necessarily bad, but it is not excellence.

The addictability is undeniable. You want to see what is around
the corner. You need to find out what is going on. These conflicts
must be resolved. If only you could get past these stupid puzzles…

Addictability gets a solid “B.”

Conclusion

While
not creating anything new, per se, Ubisoft has taken the venerable
Adventure Game and, once again, raised it to a new height.
If you enjoy adventure games, then you will enjoy Myst IV. Buy this
game. Pay retail for it. Tell your friends about it. Get the t-shirt.

Yes, I’m giving it a score
of “A.” With no reservations.

Final Grade: A
(find out more about our
grading system)

System Requirements: