Game Reviews

realMyst

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realMyst
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Back in the day, Planescape: Torment was one of those games that every journalist loves and nobody buys. Myst was its exact opposite.

The game had you exploring a hand-painted world locked down by puzzles, seeking to free two brothers from the books they were trapped in.

Though beautiful, it was agonisingly clunky and slow as you explored its obtuse puzzle-riddled worlds. But it just kept selling, in sequel after sequel. When it was revealed in 2005 that Myst V would be the last in the series, the press corps mostly breathed a sigh of relief.

If realMyst had been the original release, the story would be different. realMyst was a year 2000 remake in a true 3D engine, featuring real-world movement rather than the old-dungeon-crawling-style jumps of Myst.

It suffered by comparison with its contemporary PC games, but on modern iOS you feel the series might have found a home.

The smooth moves

This version actually makes the world a joy to explore. It's almost attractive, reminiscent of a low-polygon Dear Esther, and it doesn't suffer so badly from the frame-rate problems that mangled the original realMyst PC release.

But there are huge problems reading the in-game books and watching the in-game video - once revolutionary, they're now extremely low-resolution. We tested on an iPad 2, and we'd hate to think what the game looks like on a Retina display.

Given the combined video and 3D world, the extremely frequent loading screens are understandable, but the pay-off (to a modern gamer's eye) isn't necessarily worth it.

Testing procedure

As we said in our review of the original Myst on iOS, the game's puzzles are still mind-numbingly tough - especially to your colour-blind reviewer - but that just makes the joy of achieving a breakthrough all the sweeter.

In the five Ages explorable from the game's central hub, there's enough of a variety of puzzles that there's always something to do when you're stuck - but there's also the familiar futile wandering when you've tried everything, and far too much backtracking for each puzzle.

If you've played through the original on iOS, this is definitely an improvement, fixing not only the problems with Myst but many of the problems with realMyst too.

realMyst

Despite some resolution issues, realMyst is a solid remake of a remake, improving slightly on a game that was itself a slight improvement on a game
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Dan Griliopoulos
Dan Griliopoulos
A backroom operator, Dan works behind the scenes to source and proof content for PG.biz; if you notice Dan's work, then something has gone wrong. Dan's background is in writing about politics, tech and the games industry, and he's addicted to social networking and board games. His favourite mobile games are Carcassone, Neuroshima Hex and Catan (though he laments its lack of online multiplayer).