Myst IV: Revelation

This is technically the fifth game in the Myst series. I have jumped over the fourth game, Uru, since Uru is kind of on another plot thread. Myst IV continues on with the plot from the first three games with your player character and Atrus and whatever he has going on.

Myst IV is a puzzle game full of strange worlds to explore. It does feel a bit different from the previous Mysts, but it is still a fun and puzzling time. Find it on Steam.

How is Myst IV? Especially compared to the previous Myst games? It still keeps the same system from 3, where you click to hop from place to place and in that place, you have free look. However, they must have tried to be too fancy. There is at least a one second delay between screen transitions this time, often times there’s more. This makes things pretty annoying when you’ll be traveling screens hundreds to thousands of times over the course of the game. I suspect that little load time is why my play time in Myst IV happens to be the highest out of the other games.

In addition, they made the mouth cursor fully animated, which, while cool, is also really annoying. Now, it no longer responds to hot spots immediately. It has to go through the animation. Which when you are moving around, you’ve probably already moved off the hot spot by the time it’s done animating. It is annoying. There is also some strange mouth acceleration going on, though part of the problem might be my monitor stretching the game.

You do get a picture-taking and note-taking system, so that will help with your travels around the ages.

There are a few more changes to this game. There is much more character interaction going on, though don’t worry, you still won’t have any conversations with them. It’s mostly just them talking to you. There are also a lot of diaries or the Myst style “Notes” in the game, so there is more plot given through dialogue in a departure from the previous games.

Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on how you like the previous Myst style of story-telling. The FMV scenes are still done really well, though. Something about the way Myst does it is just works for me. I think it’s the first person interaction of it, and the scenes are short enough that I don’t mind the real characters are interacting with nothing in real life and superimposed onto the world.

The style of the game is more like a smaller version of Riven. There are separated ages, and you need to go through each of them, figuring out how the world works. The puzzles are much more integrated into the world, so it’s more like you’re exploring a location and trying to figure out how to get around.

There are a few puzzles that are just there to be puzzles, though. Things that are easy to figure out but hard to execute.

The puzzles of the game feels harder than the third game. I’d rank this about harder than Myst I and Myst III but easier than Riven. Part of the difficulty is once again the mystery of the world. You’ll be dropped into a age and need to fiddle your way through it.

Making things even harder is you’re not even sure what your goal is in two of the ages. As a player, you know you have to go there because it’s in the game. As the character, though, you have no good reason to go there making part of the puzzle finding out what you’re even supposed to be their for.

The ages you get to explore are really great, though. All of them are interesting in their own ways and feel pretty different. They have different style of puzzles as well.

Myst IV is a fun inclusion to the Myst series, though it’s lag and cursor problems can make playing it a chore. I can ignore that since the ages are interesting and magical. The story is a bit more finding note based, so that’s a departure from the previous games. The game also does retcon some of the stuff that happens in the first Myst. I do like the FMV scenes, though. They just work wonderfully.

Find it on Steam.