Ok, for starters I want to say that I love the Myst series, to me Myst: Masterpiece Edition will probably always be the "definitive" edition of Myst, and I've never been the biggest fan of realMyst, although I feel the idea behind it is solid. As I recall, this game was primarily intended as "Real Myst for mobile", and as that it would be a really good game. However, on PC there are things that get in the way of enjoying it, like the low framerate I am going to largely blame on their choice of the Unity engine, lower than ideal polycount, and an interface that screams that it was made for mobile (such as big arrows that get in the way of immersion when you are interacting with things like switches). Also, I don't know if there is any anti-aliasing setting. I only explored the Myst island for this review, but from that I would put this game's worth at around $10 max.
I am really glad I only spent a dollar on this. From the start I was interested by the story, but my interest faded with every sexist, explicit, and (quite frankly) poorly written dialouge. Even if this was better written and less offensive, the excessive hand holding really muddies the experience and, I feel, shows that the developers were not confident in their gameplay. Really, I don't like being overly critical of games, but especially after looking up the ending I honestly can't say this is worth even the dollar I spent on it, let alone the $20 dollars it costs at full.
After seeing that it was made by Frogwares, I was really skeptical of what the quality would be like, as I have played one of their Sherlock Holmes games and it was absolutely horrendous. However, I must say, I haven't enjoyed a new game quite this much in a long time. First off, I want to explain my title. This game really can't decide what it wants to be. Throughout the game it tries to be a Portal-based puzzle game, an indie horror game, an atmospheric game, ext. What I feel it does best are the puzzles and the atmosphere. The story is ok, I guess, although it has a really terrible ending IMO, and it is highly forgettable. In my opinion, the story is there much more to serve the atmosphere. Second, I just want to say how delightful it is after playing some of the old Sierra adventure games to find a puzzle game I don't have to cheat on. Seriously, I got through the entire thing without feeling that any puzzles were impossible. And they were still really difficult, especially towards the end, so I think this game is a really good example of good puzzle design. Anyway, let's just sum this up into a Pros and Cons list: Pros: *Great atmosphere *Puzzles that don't ever feel impossible *despite using the Unreal Engine it runs really well Cons: *If you know anything about magnetism in the real world, this game will frustrate you as in it objects of a like charge attract, and there is no way I know of to change this. *forgettable story *overuse of the cliche horror stinger sound
