Revelations is a great entry to the Myst series, marred slightly by some fiendishly difficult puzzles.
The time-honored tradition of pre-rendered backgrounds and images holds very true here, and even more so with loads of worlds and environments to explore. Keep in mind that Revelations is the biggest Myst game to date--so big that it had to be packed in one DVD rather than separated on multiple discs. Ubisoft Montreal did major, major work on this title--overhauling everything to the point of combustion. And that's a good thing when you consider the fact that the Myst games have always been about creating huge, beautifully-realized, surrealistic worlds.
And with these beautiful worlds come fiendishly mind-numbing puzzles. For every new Myst game, they seem to get much harder and more challenging. Of course, it'd be easy to just look up the solutions on the Internet, but where's the fun in that? The only bad part about this is; many of the puzzles are far too challenging for their own good. To its credit, it certainly keeps the player busy. But one of the key charms of the Myst games is the sense of exploration--to find and take in new worlds. If a particularly difficult puzzle is standing in your way of progress, exploration seems limited in its scope. Needless to say, you might have to rack your brain numerous times if you ever hope of solving some of these fiendishly challenging puzzles.
The story is quite engaging. If you've been following the Myst story like I have, you'll already be familiar with Revelation's villains--the brothers evil. Sirrus and Achenar. For the first time ever, you get to enter those Red and Blue Books and see what worlds lie within them. You'll also get insight as to what those two have been up to during their imprisonment. But that's not the key mission objective here. Atrus' daughter Yeesha has been kidnapped by Sirrus, so you gotta find her before he puts a sinister plan into action that will destroy Atrus and his family from its core.
Follow it all up with a unique journal system and a hauntingly beautiful song by Peter Gabriel (who also does a voice-over in this game), and you've got the makings of a truly memorable adventure game. You might be frustrated by some of the puzzles, but you'll definitely have a wonderful time exploring these worlds.