After playing Myst, I caught "the puzzle fever" and played through Riven, Myst 3 and 4, and Obduction. I'm also trying RHEM, but I wanted to try a more story-rich puzzle game. The Longest Journey is critically acclaimed, so... Why not try it? The Good: - I like the main character, April Ryan. She's cheeky, funny, and believable. - The story is off to a strong start. I'd heard it was supposed to be complicated, but it seems quite straightforward and conventional at the moment. - The world designs are great and interesting. The Bad: Many of TLJ's puzzles don't make any sense until after they're revealed, assuming the solution makes sense at all. The Rubber Duck puzzle is, apparently, one of the most notorious amongst all games of this genre, frequently making "Top 10" lists of bad puzzles. Yes, it's that bad. How often players must look up a guide to finish a game tells you everything you need to know about it. I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I'm positive I'm not a dunce. I can proudly claim I can count on one hand the number of times I needed a small hint for Myst, Riven, Myst 3, and Obduction. I can't say the same for TLJ. I'm partway through chapter 3, and I'm quickly running out of patience due to how many times I've had to look up a full walkthrough. Extra: There is also a game-crashing glitch with the police station. GOG's known about it for years and it still hasn't been fixed! Unacceptable! There is a workaround, but you won't be able to figure out what it is for yourself, which is par for this course. Verdict: Don't play TLJ for its puzzles, so, you might as well not play it at all. I will finish TLJ because I paid for it (on sale) and I'm invested in the story. I doubt I will play it a second time or ever recommend it to anyone. You should probaly watch a "Lets Play" video instead. Reading guides to solve a game would be the same as watching someone else play it. So yeah, spend your money on food or gas instead.
I still have my copy of Darkstone for PS1, which is objectively inferior, but I loved it anyways. I wasn't going to miss the chance to play this game again. Darkstone is not a deep game. It's a fantasy hack'n'slash like Gauntlet (Man, I miss Gauntlet: Dark Legacy). Darkstone's story exists because it's expected, but no one actually cares. You're here to clean out the dungeons of monsters and head back to town with a heavy bag of swag. Rinse and repeat until you waste the BBEG. Then do it again! The key to this game's replay value is its randomized world layouts and quests. You never know which ones you're going to get each time you start a new game. Make no mistake, Darkstone's age shows, especially in its graphics and controls. Graphics aren't a deal breaker for me, and you can learn the controls with a little patience. But they will probably be a greater enemy than the minions you fight until you're familiar. There are no keybinds, and the hotkeys are all over the place. Make sure you download and read the manual first.
Stasis is a horror game with outstanding atmosphere set by the quality art and sound production. Good horror needs the proper tone, and this game nails it. There are a few jump scares, but the isometric perspective diminishes their effectiveness. The puzzles in Stasis rely on your real life logic to solve, but we've been spoiled by games with assurances, guides, limitations, and absurdities that real world logic tends to take a back seat. I think it's a good thing this game requires more logic, but good puzzle design does mean providing cues towards progress. Stasis has virtually none. So even if you're on the right track, you won't know until after you've already solved it. This could have been solved easily with a more talkative MC. The MC talks to himself a lot already, so it wouldn't hurt if he narrated a few pointers here or there, or at the very least, would say something if the player is stuck. The lack of cues not only makes it easier to get stuck, but to mess up. Messing up usually leads to the MC's death, and that's a big "no-no" for good horror. I am not proposing plot armor. The MC should absolutely be vulnerable. But maintaining an atmosphere of dread is objective #1. The fear of death is far more compelling for horror than being dead. So, in a horror game, having traps that will just kill the player's character due to the lack of informative cues will make the player frustrated rather than fearful. When that happens, the game has failed. I've foundmyself more frustred with Stasis over this than anything else. Stasis also does not have skippable dialogue. So when you repeat a scene after dying, you have to watch/listen to it again. It's annoying. Finding things can also be a pain in Stasis. While most interactable items have lights as indicators, some do not. You will find yourself clicking everywhere trying to find something you need. An option for more embellished interaction indicators, especially for pickup items, would be extremely helpful.
like any other Myst-like game, Quern is essentially a giant maze. But where a Cyan Worlds production like Obduction cames up short in the actual puzzle department, Quern has got you covered with a larger quantity of puzzles, and more of them will actually test your logic skills in a greater variety of ways. You will be required to think, not simply search for the next button or lever. Quern will also reward your curiosity. If it looks like something you can interact with, do it! If it doesn't look like something you can interact with, try interacting with it anyways! I wasn't curious enough and ended up brute-forcing one of the last puzzles in the game, which soured the ending a bit for me. Learn from my mistake! I knocked off only one star because Quern suffers from one QoL issue pretty much every game like it suffers from: walking, walking, walking. Quern isn't too bad since the island you're on is relatively compact, and not a wide sprawling mess like Obduction. Still, some kind of fast travel to go between areas you've visited before would go a long way in Myst-like games. If by some astronomical chance Cyan Worlds reads this, you guys got showed up by an indie production. It's time you stepped up your game. Myst and Riven are great, but it's time you stopped using them as life rings in this vast ocean known that is the "gaming industry."
The first thing you will notice about this game is how sluggish it is. It's painfully slow. Otherwise, it feels like Myst, it plays like Myst, it must be Myst! And the first part of the game isn't too bad. But beware of The Spire... Actually, no, F*CK THE SPIRE! I am stuck, as of writing this review. And for the first time out of the four Myst games I've played, I am looking up a full solution, because I'm ready to rip my hair out. Some spoiler free context... Myst, Riven, and Exile each let you solve the game at your own pace, and none of the puzzles were meticuous or finicky. Each of those games gave you the information you needed, and it was up to you to figure out how to use that information. Bah-dah-bing, bah-dah-boom! The Spire doesn't provide much information at all, and this game as a whole conveniently neglects to inform you that many of your correct solutions will still be wrong because it wants you to solve its puzzles in its own way. It isn't enough you already did the legwork of getting the letters, words, or numbers, but you must also input this information in a specific order - for no real reason other than the developers said so. And it's all made much worse by the slow and sluggish controls I mentioned before. I hope the rest of the game gets better.
Myst 3 is not the worst game in the series that I've played so far, but certainly not the best. I think what sets Myst 3 apart is the puzzles in this game exist as puzzles for the sake of being puzzles for you to solve, especially with the Amateria level, in contrast to the puzzles being a part of the world itself, as was the case with Riven. Take that for what you will. You've probably heard/read Myst 3 is easier than Myst and Riven, yes that is mostly true. But they're still challenging compared to your typical mainstream games. If I had to pick one thing Myst 3 did right, it was introducing the full 360 view, a much appreciated upgrade over the fixed angles of the first two. But it does come with the cost of being harder to navigate in its own way. Finding the path you're supposed to follow will become your greatest challenge in some parts, epsecially in Edanna. If I were to say one thing this game did wrong, I would say it's a tie between the weak plot and the scattering of pages in hallways and similar mundane locations. I won't spoil the story, but I will say clues should be presented, not laying on the ground wherever. So, learn from my struggle and keep your eyes open.
I don't know if I could say anything about Riven that hasn't already been said. Riven is great, and Myst might as well have been the demo. It's hard, but fair and rewarding. Don't feel bad if you need to look up a guide, but I strongly advise you exhaust all your in-game resources first. You'll feel better about it solving Riven's puzzles yourself.
I got DOSII on Steam (before I got GOG) to see how Larian does games before BG3 was available on EA. Boy, oh boy, was I disappointed. If this is the pinnacle of CRPG's, I'm scared to learn what the worst is. I think DOSII gets good ratings only because of its co-op feature. Playing a game with your friends can make even the worst game enjoyable in the same way good co-workers can help you deal with a crap job. DOSII does not offer a quality single-player experience. Alternatively, the praise is due to mods. Mods are not an accurate measure of a game's quality. If a game relies on mods to be good, it's not a good game in the first place. Case and point, DOSII has a broken inventory system, and every DOSII fan will tell you to get a mod for it. How does a AAA developer like Larian mess up inventory? Combat is utterly exhausting, even on easy mode, and even the encounters in the tutorial. Even the most insignificant battle against insects or rats is a dire struggle for life. It's not a matter of "git gud," it's a matter of metagaming. You cannot build your character however you want, you're required to min-max and power-game to accomplish anything. Logic will not help you either. For example, poison is flammable and bony fingers can pick locks in DOSII, even though neither is the case IRL. Logic also requires information, and this game sets you up to fail by keeping you ignorant. There seems to be a story, but it's so poorly conceived even Larian made it not matter. A character, I can only assume is the BBEG, wants you dead for no given reason, and rather than doing it themselves when they were literally 10ft away from you, they run off and summon a sea monster within the first 10 minutes of the game. And that's all the story I saw in 15 hours of playing. You then wash ashore on an island where you're left to wander aimlessly. No goal or anything. There is still more I could say, but I'm restricted to a character limit. Don't be fooled by the fanboys. DOSII sucks.
I was only a child when this game came out, so I didn't understand it at all back then. It looked real cool, but beat'em'up games were far easier to comprehend. Now, all these years later, I finally gave it another try. Had to first figure out which version I should play, and went with this one because it would give me the most original Myst experience. I'm glad I can say I didn't need too much help. I tried to limit myself to "how to find A hint" rather than a full solution, because the game is most enjoyable when you can figure it out for yourself. There is one puzzle not worth trouble, though: the Mazerunner. It's easy to figure out what you need to do, but you should spare yourself the trouble and find a map for it online. Some people might say this game hasn't aged well. I both agree and disagree. You don't need top-of-the-line graphics to make a game look good, or be engaging. Myst still does this, and pulls you right in. It's easy to be impatient to play a game by pre-render by pre-render by pre-render. But that only means your attitude is all wrong. I agree a fully 3d game might be considered a quality of life matter by today's standards, but Myst is meant to be about taking your time. You're not meant to speed-run through it. I will say its short length makes it feel almost like demo by today's standards. This game may actually be very short for you if you're good at puzzles. After only 8 hours, I feel like I've already seen everything Myst has to offer. I understand this is due to technological limitations, but still... I must be spoiled by massive RPG games with loads of replay value, so my perception is skewed on what caused this game to become a huge best seller and considered "revolutionary" back in the day. I know it was an important game, I can see why, but it still feels like it's past its prime. Even so, it is good, worth both your love and your time, even if only to explore some video game history at the very least.
Review title says it all. Don't expect anything great, glamorous, or well made. Got some extra time to burn on a cheap racer with almost no investment required? This game is functional enough to fill that hole. Also, probably the only combat racer I've played where the machine guns are somehow more desirable than the missiles.
