When
I was first told Id be reviewing Myst III: Exile, I thought to myself,
"Thatd be great! Thats cool! I cant wait! Uh, what the heck is Myst
III: Exile?" It didnt take long to find out the answer to that
question. The only thing I really knew about it was that it was
evidently the third installment of the series. In the many years of my
spacious gaming career I have nary invested a single minute of
puzzle-solving madness in a Myst game until now, so I had no idea what I
was getting myself into. It turns out that Myst III: Exile is one of the
most prodigious puzzle games Ive ever played, and its a pretty darn
good-looking puzzle game at that.
In
cautious anticipation, I slapped the game into my Xbox and viewed the
intro. "Cool", I thought. "The music sure does sound good." Then the
menu screen popped up and I was told to start a new game. So I did, and
the game proceeded. "Is that a mouse pointer Im looking at? A point and
click game, on a console? Why am I playing a point and click game on my
Xbox?" I almost dreaded what I would be accomplishing (or trying to
accomplish) in the next several days of my life, as I feared I was in
for the most boring gaming hours Ive ever experienced. What happened
after that is difficult to say. Upon first playing this game I was
strangely enchanted by solving oodles of very odd, almost abstruse
puzzles in diverse awe-inspiring settings. Then it became a tedious
exercise in navigating the landscapes and just simply knowing what to do
next.
However,
Myst III is all about (and nothing but) puzzles. One of three things
will happen to you during or after playing this game: Youll be so
gleaming with an abundance of happiness at having witnessed and solved
some of the most toilsome and ingenious puzzles ever created that you
may attempt to play through the game again; youll get so bored with
pointing and clicking that youll sink into a heavy, sleep-induced coma,
or youll be cursing so often and profusely that the game will probably
end up taking a forced trip through your paper shredder and then
hammered into even tinier unrecognizable bits.
Fortunately
for me (and probably my editors as well), I didnt experience the
latter. What I did experience was a fairly mediocre game full of lots of
attractive things to look at and pretty places to see and travel to, but
a game that ultimately lacked excitement and replayability, and did
little more for me than help me decide that I dont want to play another
point and click game on my Xbox-ever. Did I mention there are lots of
puzzles to solve?
But
you dont just waltz around various worlds deciphering puzzles for the
fun of it. Theres quite an expansive story that started way back in
1993 with the original Myst game. But if your like me, and have never
resorted to playing a Myst game, you have no idea what that story is or
has been to this point. Nor do you need to know. Like most games
sequels, Myst III: Exile can live and breathe on its own, but its
definitely an extension of its predecessors. If you really want to catch
yourself up on the story, go play Riven first. But, Ill spare you the
agony and energy of having to do that and just tell you all you really
need to know here.
Simply
put, the story focuses on Atrus, who decides to try and create a new
world via inscribing a new book. Before Atrus can complete his pet
project however, a mysterious thief breaks in to his laboratory and
scurries off with it, which is where you come in. Your job is to hunt
down this thief by exploring worlds that were written by Atrus earlier
in his life and solving numerous amounts of mind-bending puzzles. By
resolving these puzzles you begin to unravel the ambiguous relationship
between the thief, Atrus, and his family.
As
I mentioned above, this is a point and click game, so anyone who isnt
endowed with a good deal of patience, should save themselves some pain
and grief and play something else. Even those who are a little more
tolerant may have a difficult time getting used to the unorthodox method
of moving around the differing worlds and the incredibly slow pace of
the game in general. Also, it can get burdensome trying to decipher
where exactly to point and click next, as the paths in some places are
indiscernibly confusing. God bless the zip option, which is a very nice
feature, letting you travel faster through areas that youve already
visited, speeding up the game a bit. Its not that the point and click
adventure genre is a bad thing, just that on a console it seems a little
out-of-place.
Graphically,
the game is an absolute marvel. Everything from the rocky crags of
Jnanin to the lush forest of Edanna, its all very life-like and
realistic. Nothing is overlooked in detail, and the puzzles themselves
ooze with design and beg to be solved, however cryptic they may seem. In
this sequel, the pre-rendered drawings have been replaced with a fully
3-D environment, which allows you to rotate and look in all directions,
which is a really nice addition and serves to make it more interesting.
Unfortunately, since this is a Myst game, you advance one still shot at
a time, so you get the sense of being stuck inside of a photograph,
rather than moving around in a full-blown, living, breathing landscape
that you can manipulate as you see fit. This method of advancement gets
expeditiously stale, and Im constantly finding myself wanting to break
free of this "one step at a time" approach and take control of my
character and traipse around the environment at my own free will. This
adds to the frustration, and just makes the game unnecessarily dull and
boring.
On
a lighter note, Im always up to a good, orchestrated score, and Myst
III: Exiles is no exception. As was briefly mentioned, I really enjoy
the wonderfully composed music, as its very authentic and unique and
really set the mood of the game. However, most of the time the music
takes a low profile, getting muffled down to nothing more than an eerie
pastiche of groans and blurbs in the background. The accompanying sound
effects are wonderful, from opening creaky old doors, to summoning a
critter out of its burrow, to cranking wheels of various kinds, and
interacting with a variety of flora and fauna, its all here and is
credible and convincing. But those sound effects seem a little too
infrequent to really enjoy all that much.
The
controls are as simple as it gets. If you can breathe, you can control
this game. You do little more in the game than pointing and clicking,
although there are books you collect that you can read by pressing
either left or right on the d-pad to turn the pages. Unfortunately I
have no idea what some of these books say, as the writing is about as
easy to read as Arabic. The contents of the main book are actually
printed in the back of the game manual as well but its hardly any
easier to read. Your inventory is located along the bottom of the screen
and holds such items as books and journals, or sometimes just a sheet of
paper with a symbol on it. You can drag these items from your inventory
to the game screen when appropriate, which I suppose lets you do more
than just pointing and clicking, but I honestly dont find any of the
three all that stimulating. After hitting the start button, you have a
few options such as toggling vibration on or off, switching to free-look
mode (which basically means using the cursor or not), enabling zip mode,
and watching the special features, which is nothing more than a
22-minute documentary on the making of Myst III: Exile if your
interested, which can be watched in bits, or all at once.
I
cant help but think that this game was made for die-hard fans of the
series, which is great if youre one of them, but if your not a fan of
Myst games by now, Myst III: Exile probably wont persuade you to start
being one any time soon. Had this game been created with a moving
character that was able to run about freely, it would have improved
tremendously and would be more palatable by non-Myst fans. Instead, Im
at the mercy of yesterdays technology and the painfully slow
"click-and-look" play mechanics, which left me feeling a bit
underwhelmed and with a feeling of constant frustration. With its slow
gameplay and dreadfully difficult puzzles, Myst III: Exile may satisfy
patient gamers who consider themselves expert puzzle solvers. For all
others, if you actually feel the urge to solve puzzles that would have
stumped Einstein, get a hold of the book first and rent this one
instead; or better yet, buy the PC version and play the game the way it
was meant to be played. But dont say I didnt warn you. You may need a
new paper shredder by the time youre done with it.