How do you make a masterpiece even better? Cyan found a way.
Accompanied by a cinematic of a man falling through a rift in the sky, this thought-provoking prologue leads you into one of the most emersive and challenging games ever made. The game begins simply with a book landing at your feet. This book is entitled "Myst" and is the very book spoken of by the narrator in the prologue.
As you open the book and flip through it, you notice what seems to be a living illustration on the back page. Noticing a corner of the page is wrinkled, you reach out to smooth it, causing your hand ot brush the illustration. Suddenly, everything goes black, and you find yourself standing on the docks of a mysterious island. Where do you go from here? That's up to you.
I obviously don't want to give too much away, so lets move on to the breakdown of the game itself.
[Controls - 9/10] The control scheme of this game is your basic point and click setup. Many early CD-Based games used this control scheme, and it's a solid one, though hardly innovative. Moving about the world of Myst is very easy to do. There are no complex controls to master, and that is to the benefit of the rest of the game because as a game of exploration and puzzle-solving, you will need to be able to move and manipulate things easily.
In the original Myst, you were limited to walking down preset paths. This was highly disappointing in a game centered around exploration, and was a large reason why many players thought the game felt claustrophobic. In responce, Cyan has remedied this with REALMyst, in which you are thankfully given free range of motion. You can walk in any direction and fully explore your environment. Not only does this make the world of Myst feel larger and less constraining, but giving the player free range of movement means the game no longer feels like an 'interactive slide show' as some have commented, and instead now truly feels like the emmersive world that was advertized by the developers so long ago.
[Graphics - 9/10] The graphics of the original Myst were the part of the game that really got people's attention. In 1995, no game ANYWHERE looked nearly as realistic as Myst did with it's beautiful pre-rendered 3D graphics. Of course, graphics have come a long way since then, and people quickly tired of static visuals that simply reminded you that the world was fake once the initial wow-facotr wore off. REALMyst once again delivers by enhancing the visuals to be rendered in realtime, greatly increasing the emmersion factor and helping the world of Myst really come to life.
[Story - 9/10] Herein lies one of the most polarizing points of the game. Many of Myst's detractors say the game has no plot, and never tells you anything. While it is true that initially you're merely thrust onto Myst Island with no clue what's going on, where to go, or what to do, the thing that most players may miss is that the story has already occured. You arrive at the end and are simply the agent fate has chosen to determine the outcome.
Since the only other people on the island are two brothers trapped in books and more interested in their own well-being than yours, it's up to you to snoop around and uncover what's going on. This means that in order to fully understand what's happening, you have to be prepared to read ALOT. There are books, notes, and journals everywhere, and all of them contain clues either to the story, or to a puzzle you need to slove to move forward. This means unless you enjoy reading, you're probably going to be bored, and lets face i. If you're playing an exploration and puzzle sloving game based on bein g sucked into as book and you don't like to read... Why are you even playing this game?
Lets move on to the actual story. I promise i'll try not to give too much away, but here's the skivvy. You are Random Guy # 12. You've gone to the public library and found what appears to be a journal entitled 'Myst'. Upon reading the journal, you learn it describes an island, which the writer calls 'Myst' and his various experiences on it. After finishing the book, you notice the back page has a somehow moving illustration of the very island the book just described. As you watch the moving picture you notice a corner of the page is wrinkled so you reach out to smooth it over,. As you do so, your palm touches the image causing you to instantly black out. (This is the start of the game where you click on the picture in the back of a book and end up on the docks)
When you wake, you find yourself on the docks of Myst, the island described in the book. Have you been sucked into the book? Or was the book a transporter to a real island somehwere else? Well for now your only option is to explore and hopefully find a way home. After some quick wandering you quickly discover something is very wrong. Someone burned virtually every book in the island's Library, and there doesn't seem to be another living soul for miles, except of course for two unhinged brothers, Sirrus and Achenar who have each been sealed in a colored prision book with crrospondingly colored pages. Each claims to be innocent and begs you to help them by brining them the pages to their book, which are apparently the keys to their prisons, and not to help the other brother. This marks the pivotal choice of the game. Whom do you believe?
Throughout the game you must solve puzzles and uncover clues to figure out who is telling the truth. During your travels, you learn though assorted notes and journals, the tragic tale of Myst island. I won't go further into detail, in case whoever's reading this hasn't played the game for some reason. Suffice it to say it's a great story, and the buildup to the final choice, when you must decide who to release carries enormous pressure. I would also like to point out that this game has 4 possible endings. Three of them are "Bad" endings, and one the "Good" ending. Unfortunately, in their zeal to leave a nice opening for a sequal, they left the "Good" ending a bit lackluster after all the buildup.
[Replayability - 5/10] Unfortunately, this is the part of the game that falls short. In the original Myst, once you've beaten the game, that's it. There's nothing left to do. There are no secrets left to find and nothing to unlock. In REALMyst they tried to remedy this by adding a new age called 'Rime' that you can only access after completing the game. Nothing really happens there, it just offers you a little more background story and some pretty contraptions to play with until for awhile.
Besides the Rime age, REALMyst offers nothing new in the way of replayablility. It still suffers from the games greatest weakness, which is the fact that once you know the solution to the final puzzle, you can literally skip the whole game and go right to the end. This was my sole gripe with the game. I loved it the first time through, and it's neat to play again for nostalgic purposes once you've given yourself enough time to forget all the puzzles. Unfortunately though, there isn't anything to keep you coming back. Once you've beaten Myst you're best off moving to the next game in the series and returning only for nostalgic purposes.
[Conclusion] Myst is an excellent game for people who like to be intellectually challenged. If you're playing it for the first time, and if you have the patience to read and uncover the story, not to mention the perseverance to get through all the difficult puzzles, you'll be in for an interesting and engaging experience. If you're one of those people who think the only good game includes sports, shooting, explosions, or some combination thereof, and are coming into this expecting to be spoon-fed plot and direction and not to have to think for yourself... well... you'll end up joining the legion of other angry and disappointed gamers who thought Myst was an awful and boring blemish on the face of gaming.
Despite the fact that it's merits have been debated over and then re-debated over by zealous gamers on either side, the fact remains that Myst will continue to live on as one of the most creative and most popular games in history. It was a masterpiece, held back only by the disappointing shove you got into playing the sequals in order to get any kind of closure to the story, while also being offered no incentive to continue exploring the world they've already handed you. Despite that, and especially if you're considering playing this for the first time, I give REALMyst a full reccomendation.