![]() ![]() I’m guessing they realized that since the average Myst player takes tons of screencaps anyway (and, back in the 90s, jotted clues down on paper), they might as well build it right into the game. The gameplay is much the same, but they hand you a few new toys! There’s a steampunk camera with an attached notebook where you can jot stuff down. If you can swallow its dumber elements, Revelation is awesome. That just makes it harder to swallow Serenia and its fucking elemental spirits. The puzzles in Revelation are back on track in that they’re really freaking devious Spire in particular made me pull a lot of hair out. Serenia may be pretty, but I much prefer exploring Spire and Haven, gradually learning how the brothers thrived in their prisons and worked out their escape. The mystical new-age bullshit just does not jive with the series as a whole. It’s like you’re suddenly playing an entirely different game, one designed for the children of hippies. I don’t know what the developers were smoking. You have to discover your special element and charm a spirit guide, and there’s this business with a giant fungus that absorbs the memories of the dead, and then you take a trip into the Spirit Realm where you receive help from your spirit guide, who is voiced by, I kid you not, Peter Gabriel. It’s in Serenia that Sirrus and Achenar are plotting their plot, and it’s also where the game’s story takes a detour into pure dopiness. And there’s a final Age, Serenia, that’s like the ultimate vacation spot: crystal-blue water, floating stone dolmens, friendly priestesses, whimsical flora. Spire and Haven are unique and visually thrilling. I would kill to live in Atrus’s family home on Tomanha. The Ages of Revelation are definitely the loveliest in the series. You guessed it: Sirrus and Achenar have busted loose, nabbed Yeesha, and are plotting an evil plot. When we learn that Sirrus harnessed Spire’s unique anti-gravitational properties and Achenar developed a symbiosis with Haven’s ecosystem, can we truly be surprised? NICE GOING, ATRUS. No way THAT could go wrong! So the cold, intelligent Sirrus (Brian Wrench) has been stranded on Spire, a floating mass of Gothic architecture, while the dumb, animalistic Achenar (Guy Sprung) was stuck in Haven, a fecund jungle realm. Because Atrus makes dumbass decisions, he didn’t just stick them in the literary equivalent of a bare cell, but gave them whole expansive worlds to play around in. ![]() See, when he realized they were rotten, Atrus tricked his sons into separate Ages and trapped them there. Fakeout! All he destroyed was the means of communicating with them. Remember Atrus’s evil, power-hungry sons, Sirrus and Achenar? He appeared to kill them at the end of the first game. ![]() But anywho, Atrus has to leave on some contrived business, and then you get knocked out, and when you come to, Yeesha has vanished, and. That’s a huge problem this game has: half the characters talk like they’re in a period costume drama and the other half use modern American slang. Plus, her dialogue is peppered with anachronisms. Yeesha (Juliette Gosselin) is about ten years old and is so cute and plucky that you can’t help but want to smack her. “This franchise can totally benefit from an adorable and overly precocious child!” said no smart-thinking person ever. Catherine is elsewhere but Atrus’s daughter, Yeesha, is around, and.ugh. Damn, Atrus! I guess if you can write a world into being, you can award yourself a first-class pad. Tomanha is now much bigger, and is a fucking dream home: a series of handsome wrought-metal buildings connected by walkways around a central lake, complete with observatory, greenhouse, kitchen/den, separate bedroom suites, and secret passages. Hokay, so, you arrive in the Age of Tomanha to visit Atrus’s family, just like in the last game. Believe me, I love Revelation I just have to accept that it faceplants when it comes to telling a compelling and non-derpy story. Basically it’s just that the entire plot and all the characters suck nothing major. So this is a damn good entry that is hurt by some huge flaws. This game and this other one look very promising maybe they’ll even show some mercy to us filthy, depraved, scumbag Mac users! In the meantime, here’s Myst IV: Revelation, my personal last hurrah with the series. It does give me some hope that there are current developers out there who, thanks to technological improvements and crowd-funding, can actually follow in the footsteps of Myst. These games are so beautiful to look upon. Yeah, you can replay them after you’ve had time to forget all the puzzle solutions, but you miss the initial sense of wondrous discovery, each new Age unfolding before your big moist eyeballs. It makes me sad that the Myst series is so fleeting it really does. Myst IV: Revelation - Bullshit In Paradise ![]()
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