realMyst: Masterpiece Edition

I grew up on the original Myst and am so fond of that version, and playing this version is so worth it. It's stunningly beautiful. I find myself sometimes just stopping somewhere to watch the day turn to night and back again. I can't recommend this enough.

First things first: with this update Cyan did a very very good job and as far as I can say for now, this Edition is worth every penny and especially any minute of your time you are going to spend on it, but do not expect a somehow new game, if you know it already from earlier versions. Well then, here some impressions and reflections. Myst is not merely a computer game that has written history, but it has been at any time a wonderful piece of intellectual creativity and therefor it is likely to be a strong challenge keeping it up to date with modern pc gaming technology. That is crucial: video games are without doubt some kind of modern art (or I 'd better say: they have a chance to be ...), but computer games are a matter of technology as well, and, despite all reasoning about aesthetical principles and all that serious gaming, they are essentially about having fun - and as far as it goes for me, it is a matter of limited fun seeing a 1994 video-game in vga mode on a 32 inch LCD flat screen TV set (I started gaming with this one on windows 3.1), especially if this game then was hailed for it's sensational graphical quality. So, this actually has been the challenge: if you start blowing it up with render effects and technical gimmicks, remodelling and tesselation at the bleeding edge of actual graphics hardware, you will surely lose the tradition, the feeling and the context of the original game. A pretty nice invention though is the progressing day/night light cycle though, which adds a smooth aspect of dynamic. But most of all, it was a fantasy of mine for years someone developing a game like Myst in RealTime 3D and it's real joyous playing Myst itself that way now. And i'm pretty sure, that the only reason, why you couldn't do this in the 9oies, has been that this was technically impossible by performance. The rest, imho, besides such things like upgraded textures and some 3D Art on the terrain etc, is 100 % the original. Shaders are used in a very moderate, say conservative and effective way. The lighting is reasonable, but I think due to the somehow surrealistic nature of the game not realistic in a photo realistic sense. Yes, in a sense it's been polished. Some technical notes: The game installs and runs out of the box with PlayOnLinux on Ubuntu 16.04.2 using Wine 2.9 (but I haven't played through yet, just started). It tends to crash when advanced graphical settings are changed, but on restart the settings are applied. So, if you are declined to add this one to your linux games library, be prepared to spend some time on testing the appropriate settings. Things ease up a little if you have reconfigured your keyboard and reactivated the legacy and extremely useful ctrl-alt-backspace key combination for resetting the X-server, as crashed wine graphics often block the interface or waste the root screen (otherwise you may find some hints how to do this - if it's o.k to give a link - here -> https://askubuntu.com/questions/10622/how-can-i-enable-ctrlaltbackspace The performance on highest settings is weak but playable on a local AMD RX 470 (Amdgpru Pro driver), 12 GB RAM, AMD FX 6100 CPU. By now I have not upgraded MESA etc but expecting true performance gains with Ubuntu 16.04.3 in August 2017 and setting up the radeon open source driver.. Have fun and so long. Post Script: Myst is the master, yes, but I'm a little curious, when the real *Champion Riven* will be treated as well ... ;-)

A very beautiful remake of the original. I especially appreciate having the point-and-click option.

Graphics have been nicely updated and are a significant improvement over the original realMyst I remember playing c. 2001 or so). I also like this version better than the iOS version, which got rid of the weather and time of day changes for some reason (possibly hardware related), so it's nice to see those restored. However, the graphics are still well below the quality of what today's average gamer would expect from a commercial title (yes this is taking into account the fact that this game is 5 years old as of the time of this review), and in terms of textures and photorealism are well below even the quality of the Myst sequels (the last of which was produced around 2007). Obviously realtime 3D is going to be a bit of a drop in render quality from prerendered stills, but modern hardware can handle a substantially greater load than this game gives it, and the problems here are more with the actual assets than the final rendered output. Myst island still has that hokey painted-on grass texture. Foliage and plants still look cartoonish and unrealistic. Shadows look blocky and weird. The water and sky effects look quite nice, but overall this game is sitting at about the graphical quality you'd expect to see in an indie title created in Unity by a talented amateur. It's always fun to rexperience Myst no matter how old and familiar it gets, and I usually buy every version that comes out. However, I think the developer's failure to reimagine these worlds using the full extent of what modern technology is capable of represents a "real missed" (ba dum tss) opportunity. In terms of gameplay, I have no real complaints. I'd like to suggest maybe adding a key to toggle between the free movement and classic navigation modes without having to open the preferences panel every time, as I like to switch back and forth.

I thought this version of Myst was much, MUCH better than the original. I'm sure there are some die hard Myst fans that will disagree with that statement, but I never played the original as a kid, so there is no nostalgia factor for me. If you compare the two games side by side, without a nostalgia bias, this version is clearly better. The graphics and gameplay mechanics are both so much better. With that being said, it's still nowhere near as good as Riven. Overall I thought Myst was too small, and too short. I beat the game super quick. Riven is a much better game in so many ways. And even though this is a mostly positive review, I only gave realMyst 3 stars because at the end of the day, it's still a boring game haha. In conclusion, if you've never played Myst before, and you want to give it a try, I would definitely recommend this version over the original. If you want to revisit Myst for nostalgia purposes though, maybe stick to the original? Or not, whatever, lol.