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Myst
is an immersive experience that draws you in and won't let
you go. You enter a unique setting, venturing alone to varied
times and places, the worlds that compose Myst. There
are no instructions, and you encounter no living beings but
soon realise your actions may help individuals who are somehow
trapped in a parallel dimension. You don't so much play Myst,
as experience it. Of course you must solve a multitude of
puzzles, mazes, and problems, but Myst's principal
attractions are its environment and the underlying family
drama that unfolds as you explore...
Myst
has had a successful run starting as an Apple Mac game and
then being converted to the PC, where the franchise really
took off.
The
DS version of the game is a huge disappointment that fails
in so many areas that I barely know where to begin. As the
game has been seen in so many different guises I was surprised
to see that there were so many problems with this latest version.
Firstly,
and most importantly for a
first-person adventure game, the DS's screens are just too
small for this type of game to work well as a portable offering.
Then
there's the fact that the images are too dark and the sound
and music too loud - with no option to change them. This becomes
very problematic right from the start. The first challenge
is to recover a message from the imager. I spent several days
trying to work this out and in the end I had to resort to
going onto the Internet and tracking down a solution to the
game to help me progress.
The
switch for locating the controls to the imager was so obscure
and in such a dark area that I'm not surprised I couldn't
find it. But, having cheated to find that, I listened to the
message. This is where I met a problem with the sound. While
the message was being played, it was almost drowned out by
the looped music in the room. I had to listen to it twice
before I then headed off around the island.
After
spending several more hours not having a clue what to do I
again checked the walkthrough. In fact, sadly, I spent the
entire time using the online guide to progress me. The solutions
to the puzzles just didn't seem logical to me and they are
so fiddly and impossible to find that you'll need a guide
to get anywhere - which is a little pointless.
One
section had me having to locate an area on a map (although
why I would logically have been poking at a map is anyone's
guess). The online walkthrough, which was for the PC version,
told me to locate a flashing area on the map. Now that would
make sense - it would at least alert you to the fact that
the map was interactive. However, the map on the DS version
does not have a flashing segment... So, I randomly tapped
the screen until something happened.
A
little later (again following the online help) I had to turn
three of the symbols, on three of the pillars, green. I messed
up the first time around, by accidentally pressing another
button by mistake. So, I tried again, but nothing happened.
I tried again, and again nothing happened. At this point I
was so frustrated by the pure pointlessness of the game that
I gave up.
At
the end of the day this game is not very logical, the puzzles
are ludicrously complex and the whole thing is one huge disappointment.
It's a myst-ery to me why anyone would bother to waste their
money on such a badly designed game.
Pete
Boomer
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£19.99
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£17.99
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£19.95
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£19.99
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£16.97
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£15.93
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£15.93
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All prices correct at time of going to press.
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