Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Eurogamer Retro: Myst

By John Walker on November 22nd, 2010 at 11:05 am.

I hate Myst.

A hundred years ago, when I first started out writing reviews for PC Gamer, I was sent the adventure games. This was partly because I knew a lot about adventure games, but mostly because they were far more likely to be awful. And everyone hates me. Which meant I suffered at the hands of Myst. Myst, a game more tedious than being shown someone’s photographs after they’ve been on holiday to Swindon, spawned so many copycat pre-rendered mechanical-puzzled miseryfests. And sure, while they paid my rent, my loathing grew and grew. You may have played Myst when it first game out, and in your youthful naivety mistook it for something not purest evil, but I’ll bet you didn’t play Dracula: Resurrection, Jerusalem: The 3 Roads To The Holy Land, or Arthur’s Knights 2. Or Schizm: The Mysterious Journey. Or The Secret of Nautilus. Or The New Adventures Of The Time Machine. Or The Watchmaker. Anyway, the point being, I’ve written a retro of the original Myst for Eurogamer. Choice quote below.

Good grief, I hate stinking Myst. And I hate anyone who likes it. I hate you, and your ghastly taste. If this was good enough – if this was what you wanted from gaming – then I hope the litany of miserable clone games that destroyed the joy of adventuring has made you very happy. Every time I receive a game to review that requires me to read its entire plot from a digital pile of horribly written “books”, I turn and look at you with such piteous contempt that your mothers want to disown you.

Seriously, this is the game that made it okay for developers to think, “Nah, screw telling a story, let’s just make the player pick it all up from our handwriting-font-printed virtual novels. It’ll be much easier to excuse a collection of meaningless, unconnected puzzles if there’s a book about flying cats or something. And a diary. No, wait, 18 diaries. 18 diaries filled with pages and pages of our purplest prose, in which one paragraph of information somewhat relates to a puzzle 15 locations away. That’s narrative.”

I hate Myst.

__________________

« | »

, , , .

165 Comments »

  1. 22/11/2010 at 11:07 Kirrus says:

    Myst IV was awesome.

    • 22/11/2010 at 11:24 Xocrates says:

      Myst IV was extremely silly.

      Riven was awesome.

    • 22/11/2010 at 11:57 Xercies says:

      I loved Myst 4 as well, the world building, the atmosphere, the really tactile feel you get for just tapping on things and pulling levers. i just couldn’t get past it because the puzzles were so hard…and LOGIC! AH!

    • 22/11/2010 at 14:47 Ira says:

      Riven was awesome, it injected some story into the games. I’m a sucker for puzzle games and Riven was the shiz.

    • 22/11/2010 at 16:33 ShadowNate says:

      Riven was very good, BUT it did suffer from the “hand-written” diaries syndrome, some of which were almost impossible to read. And also at least the original version had some mouse clicking bugs in (two) very critical locations.

    • 23/11/2010 at 00:57 Devan says:

      I also like Riven, and I never really minded all the handwritten-book-reading either. It felt kind of like being an archaeologist uncovering the incomplete and long-abandoned thoughts and machinations of earlier explorers, and rediscovering the same challenges that they had struggled with earlier. I think that was the intent, and I preferred interacting with the environment in those games rather than with people. My brother and I kept a paper notebook near the computer where we would draw pictures and write down hints for later.

      To me, the story simply provided context for the puzzles, and the real meat of the game was the mental exercise and feeling of accomplishment.

  2. 22/11/2010 at 11:11 Mike says:

    So. 7/10?

  3. 22/11/2010 at 11:13 Memphis-Ahn says:

    I think someone secretly hates videogames.

  4. 22/11/2010 at 11:15 Meat Circus says:

    JOHN’S WORD IS LAW.

  5. 22/11/2010 at 11:15 Beach Head says:

    B-b-b-but it’s on GOG.com!

    I mean, it has to be good!

    All I can remember about anything Myst is that I got my Pops Riven and he never played it.
    I tried to play it but got lost and bored after I talked to some FMV person hiding in a pod house.
    And there were pipes or something.

  6. 22/11/2010 at 11:20 Spoiler Duck says:

    Haha. I remember reading PCGamer and nearly every review or feature* had some dig at Myst. I came very much to the conclusion that I must be weird for liking it. Ignore my issues with sexual orientation, MYST was my secret in the closet.

    I get why you don’t like the game, John. I really do. I get why it is very easy to also to dismantle this game at the academic level (both in narrative and ludic). I could never construct a well-written argument for Myst’s existence other than perhaps its fantastic world-building, something that was never quite executed on well enough in the immediate, hence those poorly written books you despise.

    But damnit, John; I love Myst. And it’s sequels even more so. Take your stinking, bile-filled sham of a retrospective elsewhere and leave me be!
    (Or, y’know, don’t because it’s your website and all)

    *Exaggeration. Just not as exaggerated as one would think.

  7. 22/11/2010 at 11:26 Neil says:

    “spawned so many copycat pre-rendered mechanical-puzzled miseryfests”

    Like Return to Zork and The 7th Guest?

    • 22/11/2010 at 11:30 Collic says:

      The 7th guest was creepy with some titillation thrown in. The actual puzzles , the gameplay itself was just as tedious. Not as bad as Myst, but certainly not fun to actually play either.

    • 22/11/2010 at 11:48 John Walker says:

      7th Guest was rubbish. Let’s not forget that. It certainly had novelty value, but for all its tech and swooping cameras, you were still dividing a cake up so it had the same number of graves per segment.

    • 22/11/2010 at 11:51 Om says:

      You take that back John Walker. 7th Guest was a classic and shouldn’t be faulted just for being a puzzle game with a bit of acting thrown in

    • 22/11/2010 at 11:53 John Walker says:

      That’s a strong use of the world “acting”.

    • 22/11/2010 at 12:10 vanarbulax says:

      Oh god, Return to Zork.

      OH GOD! THE BONDING PLANT!

      And that stupid house breaking into thing.

      Only upside (upside?) is “want some rye? ‘Course you do!” is quoted by my family at random intervals until eternity.

      EDIT: And that’s through rose-tinted glasses, watching segments on youtube shows how a six-year-old’s brain can embellish that world to have looked somewhat believable and coherent.

    • 22/11/2010 at 13:39 Pseudonym says:

      For a second there I was getting all indignant and ready to defend Return to Zork, but then Vanarbulax mentioned that rye line, and I realised you’re talking about the crap game a friend of mine had, and not the brilliant Zork: Grand Inquisitor.

      So, I guess what I’m saying is: carry on.

    • 22/11/2010 at 17:02 Birdman Tribe Leader says:

      Hey! I love Return to Zork! But okay… its puzzles are completely ridiculous. The acting is rather silly (endearing???). The graphics are maybe not as impressive as i thought at age 8 or whatever.

      I guess I played it at a young enough age that it was easy for me to have a sense of mystery and wonder. And that I still found it challenging and exciting even with the hintbook on my lap the whole time.

      But I wasn’t so naive as to not realize that it was Myst that ruined adventure games, not Doom. Even a child can realize that interacting with characters and trying to solve problems in a world is not the same as pushing gears and levers around and never speaking to anyone.

      Syberia suffered from the Mystification of adventure games. Even the Longest Journey a tiny bit (anyone remember the underwater chapter?)

    • 22/11/2010 at 18:36 Shadram says:

      I’ll say this about The 7th Guest: At least it was better than The 11th Hour. God, that game was awful. Me and my mates at the time played through it in the hope of boobage, and were sorely disappointed. It was an 18, and still no boobs! Not much gore, either, which makes me wonder if it was the same version the BBFC reviewed…

    • 22/11/2010 at 23:28 Hippo says:

      “It certainly had novelty value, but for all its tech and swooping cameras, you were still dividing a cake up so it had the same number of graves per segment.”

      Ah, so kind of like a fancy version of Puzzle Agent, then.

  8. 22/11/2010 at 11:28 Collic says:

    Myst. I played a demo of this back in the day. No other game has simultaneously made me feel stupid and bored me shitless at the same time. If I was a little older I would have recognised it was the game that was awful, not my cognitive skills. Thank god these died.

  9. 22/11/2010 at 11:29 MarkSide says:

    The world can be such a tragic place.

    Now I understand what Starship Titanic was a bit better, I think…

  10. 22/11/2010 at 11:34 Shazbut says:

    I liked Myst V very much

  11. 22/11/2010 at 11:38 sockeatsock says:

    I loved riven. Myst was so-so, but Riven blew me away. Very few games make beautiful worlds to explore. Instead we get all these ugly, war torn landscapes. Bah! Give me some surreal fun any day.

  12. 22/11/2010 at 11:40 Emperor_Jimmu says:

    I was very confused when I eventually got round to playing Myst. In my youthful naivety I had somehow got the impression that it was a video game. It came as quite a surprise to discover that the it was actually just a series of screenshots of a horribly rendered fields interlaced with horribly realised puzzles.

  13. 22/11/2010 at 11:40 Jonathan says:

    I did play Schism, so there. My wife is totally into this genre, for some reason. I’ve suffered through a number of them.

  14. 22/11/2010 at 11:41 Om says:

    Never got into Myst. But the strategy guide was enough of a (surprisingly) good read that I always wanted to

  15. 22/11/2010 at 11:43 Handsome Dead says:

    Myst is real bad. Adventure games are real bad.

    It’s a waste of a good world to explore.

    I like the idea of adventure games (the ones that were about exploring interesting places, not the gabriel knight bullshit), it’s just that they’re made by people with no grasp of empathy.

    “Wait, everyone in the universe knows about baseball, right?”

  17. 22/11/2010 at 11:44 fuggles says:

    When do you retrospectively ponder the last express?

  18. 22/11/2010 at 11:44 Meat Circus says:

    To all those people thinking of saying they liked Myst in a comment: remember that John will have your IP, and will TRACK YOU DOWN.

  19. 22/11/2010 at 11:47 MadTinkerer says:

    I liked Myst because it was a decent start at the time. At the time there was just one puzzle I couldn’t solve on my own (I’m slightly tone-deaf so the piano puzzle was literally impossible for me), and despite some very slow parts, I mostly enjoyed it.

    Although it may have invented the Ponderous First Person Adventure Game genre, and possibly accidentally invented the market for “casual” games in the process, in terms of actual gameplay Myst paled in comparison to the point & clickers and 7th Guest. The graphics were great at the time, and despite being mostly comprised of still pictures, were incredibly atmospheric. The puzzles were all over the place, however, ranging from too easy to unreasonably obscure to the aforementioned literally-impossible one.

    Riven was the first Myst game that was actually good (though the final Riven puzzle was ridiculous).

    EDIT: “Seriously, this is the game that made it okay for developers to think, “Nah, screw telling a story, let’s just make the player pick it all up from our handwriting-font-printed virtual novels. It’ll be much easier to excuse a collection of meaningless, unconnected puzzles if there’s a book about flying cats or something. And a diary. No, wait, 18 diaries. 18 diaries filled with pages and pages of our purplest prose, in which one paragraph of information somewhat relates to a puzzle 15 locations away. That’s narrative.””

    Really? There were a five very short readable books in the central Myst library: the entire text of each of them was comprised of puzzle clues. It’s not Myst’s fault that the other developers missed the point completely.

    “At the point where gaming had finally advanced enough to allow 3D worlds through which you could move with speed, Myst grabbed that by the throat and throttled it until it squirmed dying on the floor. ”

    Right, because practically everyone was able to come up with a Quake clone in 1993, and everyone who couldn’t owned a computer that could run it smoothly. Oh wait, at least one of us is confusing 1993 with 1998.

    “Myst is also the game I hold responsible for f***ing mechanism puzzles. Oh look, here in the middle of this wood is a metal platform with a collection of buttons and switches. I guess if I go back three miles I’ll find a book that alludes to there being something which requires a dial to be rotated 38 degrees to the right, and there was that sign on the wall in that dungeon that had some arrows that vaguely suggested that there might be a switch somewhere that needed to be pushed up and down seven times.”

    You’re right. Sierra and Lucasarts and Infocom never did anything like that before Myst. Especially Sierra.

    • 22/11/2010 at 12:22 Dain says:

      Reading all that stuff about mechanical puzzles, you have to wonder if John actually played the game for this retrospective or if he just dug out all the stuff he wrote while hating for PC gamer and joined it all together? Cos I played RealMyst again fairly recently after a very long time and what struck me was how easy all the puzzles were. Even the mazerunner which I remember flummoxing me when I was young proved no obstacle. I’ll always cherish the memories of playing this series with my grandad though.

      It’s odd though. If something similar was released as an indie game today, a world where you had to work the narrative out for yourself and use environmental clues to solve puzzles.. well.

    • 22/11/2010 at 12:36 Clovis says:

      I’ve always liked the mechanical puzzles. Having to figure them out based on clues scattered acrosst he entire game isn’t the coolest, but I like having to figure out what all the levers/buttons do, and then figuring out how to move forward.

      I enjoyed Myst, but was annoyed that it was SO popular when there were many much better adventure games out there.

    • 22/11/2010 at 17:04 DrGonzo says:

      @Dain

      Escape the room games are released every 5 minutes now and they are pretty much the same thing as Myst.

  20. 22/11/2010 at 11:49 Robert says:

    Dear Mister John Walker,

    Would you marry me?

  21. 22/11/2010 at 12:01 Gassalasca says:

    I think John’s just going all Qunns-meets-New-Vegas on us.

    I bet Myst is one of his favourite games of all time.

  22. 22/11/2010 at 12:09 Dain says:

    I like Myst :)

  23. 22/11/2010 at 12:11 zipdrive says:

    I also love you, John.
    Myst was the first CD game I owned, and perhaps the first game I ever bought (meaning it wasn’t bought for me) and I found the whole thing stupid and annoying,
    For years I couldn’t understand why it was considered such a classic and why it sold so many copies, but it appears I was simply reading the wrong magazines.

    Fuck Myst and its incoherent, illogical, slow puzzles.

    • 22/11/2010 at 12:39 Clovis says:

      Slow, yes, but Myst was hardly incomprehensible or illogical. It wasn’t really even difficult at all, was it? As someone mentioned already, Riven does have some pretty crazy puzzles.

    • 22/11/2010 at 16:52 DrGonzo says:

      If your not a boring fuck it was hard. It’s just so unbelievably mind numbing and tedious that it’s impossible to concentrate on any of the puzzles. Plus it looks like shit and was never pretty. I remember thinking it was bloody ugly back in the day.

  24. 22/11/2010 at 12:17 Babs says:

    Myst is the video game equivalent of those board games that come with a VCR tape that you watch segments of at various points during the game. It’s what you get when you merge a terrible game, a terrible film and a terrible game into one piece of media that manages to be even more terrible than the sum of it’s parts.

    I don’t like Myst either, in case you hadn’t guessed.

  25. 22/11/2010 at 12:20 Aquarion says:

    To quote Monkey Island 3: Myst is pretty, but egad is it dull.

    I recently finished RealMyst because, apparently, I really do hate to use time productively. The final video didn’t fire, so I can only assume that nobody has ever actually reported this as a bug, because I’m the only person to ever get that far.

    I did read the novels. This makes me sad, because the novels describe an interesting concept for a fantasy universe, which could support a series of games of infinite variety and interest and really make a decent commentary on the game nature of games in the same way that Bioshock so nearly did.

    Worlds where the entire world is described in script form by book and then visited by other people? There is so much metagame potential in there it could be great. Instead, it’s a series of “Think like the designer” puzzles never more complicated than an advanced sodding Powerpoint presentation.

    So yes, I also hate myst, but not for what it is, but for what it wasted.

  26. 22/11/2010 at 12:22 Howard says:

    Lol!
    Your hatred of Myst and its ilk goes a long way to making up for your appalling taste in racing games, Mr Walker. Bravo!

  27. 22/11/2010 at 12:27 AukonDK says:

    I never got off the main island, that is until they finally made Real Myst and I could actually navigate the damn place! It was quite easy after that.

  28. 22/11/2010 at 12:30 Dean says:

    Myst had a decent world and a fascinating core concept (writing books creates worlds) which almost justified the text based diaries… the puzzles were pretty awful, however.

    Riven on the other hand, same brilliant world, but bigger, more cohesive, and with a stunningly beautiful puzzle structure. Ruined by a shitty interface that made those lovely puzzles headache inducing. The point of Riven was building a knowledge of how the islands interconnected and worked together. Which would have been fun in free-roaming 3D. Not so much in static-view slideshow mode.

    I still think an RealRiven, along the lines of RealMyst, would lead to some real re-evalution of that game, as I think freed from the awful constraints of the interface it’s one of the best and most fully realised worlds in gaming.

    • 22/11/2010 at 21:20 Deccan says:

      Yes! This was the great strength of Riven, and I was a bit disappointed that it was the only game in the series to do this. To this day it remains my favourite.

  29. 22/11/2010 at 12:31 P7uen says:

    Deus Ex without guns?

    I liked it, yes I was young and naive and it was my first game ever, but it drew me in and wouldn’t let me go until I finished it.

    It taught me you can get immersed in something, that games can have a story, and that you can use your brain to get somewhere, even if most of the puzzles were unimaginably obtuse.

  30. 22/11/2010 at 12:36 Oozo says:

    “I mean, sure, adventure games up until that point were asking you to make logical choices, or solve inventory puzzles with lateral thinking…”

    USE rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle ON cable.

    Come to think of it, that one was pretty lateral/logical compared to some other puzzles of the era…

  31. 22/11/2010 at 12:45 Navagon says:

    I’ve never played Myst or been inclined to. Suffice to say this sums up exactly the way I’d expect to feel about this game if I did choose to play it.

  32. 22/11/2010 at 13:10 Urael says:

    Myst seems to be the most divisive game out there: everyone has an opinion and it’s mostly either teeth-shaving loathing or gushing adulation. Here’s Wot I think.

    Myst is a game I love to play – a world I love to inhabit. I love the whole series, actually (well maybe not 3) but am a bit tired of hearing people constantly bash them, PC Gamer included, but then celebrating crap like The Path, Super Boring MeatBoy, Speclunky or *gasp* Eve Online, possibly the dullest experience a gamer can have (sorry, Jim, but you know it’s true. Stop pretending). Most of the games in the Myst series do a fabulous job of creating evocative digital spaces using only a few pre-rendered scenes and some hand-picked audio so it comes off as pure subjective snobbery to pull out and display the rude guts of these games’ problems – and I’ll admit there are many – but ignore their beautiful alabaster successes. It’s also really rude. So you hate Myst? Fine. Then why not forgo the retrospective and let someone who DOES enjoy it pen some words? THAT would make a refreshing bloody change to read! I hate X-Factor with a fiery passion but lots of my Facebook friends apparently enjoy it, and delight in posting the least little opinion. However you don’t see me writing articles for their enjoyment about how crushingly bad it is (Not that I’m not tempted…!) .

    Finally, after all the calls on this website to bring gamers of all flavours together and forget the stupid, counter-productive wars about Consoles, Macs, Indie-love or whatever, launching scathing attacks on games beloved by many smacks of rank hypocrisy.

    • 22/11/2010 at 13:48 Shazbut says:

      ….Wait, you don’t like Spelunky?

      I’m sure that was a mistake. Quick, edit it. No-one will notice.

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:09 Berzee says:

      Two things.

      One: is there lots of articles about how Myst is terrible on rockpapershotgun that have escaped my notice?

      Two:

      Myst,
      The Path,
      Super Meat Boy,
      Spelunky,
      and Eve Online.
      9_6

  33. 22/11/2010 at 13:31 Irish Al says:

    You know Uncle Ben’s curry sauces – curry for people too shit and weedy for proper curry? Myst is the gaming equivalent of that.

  34. 22/11/2010 at 13:40 Carter says:

    One of the funnier retrospectives, was nice to read an article that wasn’t tipped towards the authors always somewhat rose-tinted memory of the game and instead danced around in scathing hate – good for a chuckle, really enjoyed it.

  35. 22/11/2010 at 13:45 Professor Paul1290 says:

    As much as I like Myst series, I don’t really play nor like the original much anymore. I like every other Myst game a lot more than Myst and that includes Uru and Myst V, both which a lot of other Myst fans seem to hate. I’m not entirely sure why, but something about the first game really irritates me and I always never make it all the way through or skip it entirely when playing the series start to finish.

  36. 22/11/2010 at 13:49 TJF588 says:

    Another remindering RSS feed post: Still haven’t booted up my GOG copy of Myst. Then again, there’re many games I haven’t rightly gotten to playing yet.

  37. 22/11/2010 at 14:02 Urthman says:

    Andrew Plotkin explains why you’re wrong better than I could:

    http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/realmyst.html

    see also

    http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/riven.html
    http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/myst3.html
    http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/myst4.html

    The Myst story is weak, but the world building is fantastic, and the puzzles are so much more fun to solve than the stupid use/combine-everything-with-everything inventory puzzles you get in the LucasArts-style games. And the decision to just get rid of characters is so much more immersive than worlds full of idiot robots that can speak 4 sentences.

  38. 22/11/2010 at 14:03 DRoseDARs says:

    I LITERALLY just finished Myst 5, like 10 minutes ago. That was… awful. I enjoyed Uru, and Riven was ok too (the rivencoaster was awesome, its Uru counterpart wasn’t as awesome), but yeah Myst was tedious and 5 was way worse. Pretty to look at, but damn was that game dull. I wanted to kill Escher everytime that blowhard appeared on my screen. What an unecessary element having him show up and drone on every few stages. And would someone PLEASE give Emo Yeesha a valium? I don’t want to try to explain to a Bahro what “hesitation” marks are and why she keeps getting them. And the ending, what a fraking letdown. All that buildup across 5 games, and all I get is a background picture of the new D’ni? I can’t even walk around on the balcony overlooking the valley it’s in? I had more freedom of movement in the tiny fraking ice cave. What a rip. Outrageously terrible way to end the series.

    I haven’t played 3 or 4 yet, so I can’t comment on them.

    • 22/11/2010 at 21:30 Deccan says:

      The series is very dear to my heart, and I agree that V was a bit shit. Look, a desert island! Never seen one of those before. Hey, this iceberg is pretty cool, I wonder if- oh, it contains literally a single easy puzzle. Way too many Impassable Knee-High Wall type puzzles. The writing mechanic was used far too often as a puzzle substitute. And yes, both Esher and Yeesha deserved a good shaking.
      Todelmer, Direbo and Noloben were visually impressive, but overall…yeah, a bit shit.

  39. 22/11/2010 at 14:36 Kryopsis says:

    “Myst is shit and everyone who likes it is an absolute idiot with a deeply-seated hatred of video games, blah-blah-blah.” Walker is being paid for this. What’s your excuse?

    I very much enjoyed Myst once I was older and less impatient. I liked the lack of an introduction and the melancholy of these abandoned, curious places. While the story wasn’t particularly complex, it was sufficient to stimulate my curiosity. I remember Myst mainly for its atmosphere: the ethereal music and sound effects, the arcane contraptions, the minimalist interface and menus that do not get in the way of enjoyment.
    While Walker is entitled to his opinion, I liked Myst.

  40. 22/11/2010 at 14:40 kastanok says:

    I haven’t looked at Myst since fumbling with it as a pre-teen.We got it free with a new PC, our first I think. The way I remember it, I enjoyed the peace and wonder of wandering around and only completed any of the puzzles through trial and error. I assumed at the time that this was because I was just too young to understand the logic behind them. And even then I recognised the acting was utter shit.

    It was still far better than Labyrinth of Time, which I can only imagine my family picked up because I mistook it as having some connection to Jim Henson’s Labyrinth film.

    EDIT: *Spots a caption* Oy, Lost Eden was brilliant. It had dinosaurs, what more do you want? But seriously, best music there has been in a game.

    • 22/11/2010 at 17:10 Birdman Tribe Leader says:

      Hey! I liked Labyrinth of Time too! Not as much as Return to Zork, but…

      Wait a second, I think I’m just a sucker for shit adventure games from that era.

  41. 22/11/2010 at 14:50 Old Sam says:

    “18 diaries filled with pages and pages of our purplest prose, in which one paragraph of information somewhat relates to a puzzle 15 locations away. That’s narrative”

    You mean like The Longest Journey?

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:12 Berzee says:

      Now *there* is a game that I played all the way through without a laugh, a smile, a pang of sadness, or anything but confusion how it inspired all the accolades. But I think I was crabby when I was playing that, so who knows? It might’ve been me.

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:37 Old Sam says:

      Me too; I think for me it was because it thought it had so much gravitas and was saying so much. It thought it was a novel. Which I suppose it was in a way, just not a very well-written one.

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:38 Berzee says:

      Oh no, I remember, it was the braindead slathering of “mature themes” and “grown up words” over every possible square inch of story.

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:39 Berzee says:

      Plus what you said :)

  42. 22/11/2010 at 14:59 Evil Otto says:

    I used to play Riven as a kid, along with some friends. We would think and make notes for hours. Pity my friends were always smarter than me though. Ah, childhood nostalgia…

  43. 22/11/2010 at 15:02 BigJonno says:

    Thank you for confirming that I’m not going senile. I’ve never played Myst, but “Myst is shit” is a trope I remember from the era’s game magazines. I’ve recently witnessed forum conversations declaring its absolute awesomeness and was beginning to wonder if I had been imagining things, or just held hostage by the views of a small group of misanthropic journalists. I’m glad to see that my brain is still functioning (mostly) correctly and that the viewpoint that Myst was indeed shit was and still is widely held.

  44. 22/11/2010 at 15:13 Coren says:

    I liked Myst. I liked it for its melancholy, for its mood, for its interesting worlds. The puzzles were never too difficult and occasionally clever. The story was clumsily told, but I didn’t really care, because I could get lost in the worlds and forget all about it.

    Now Riven… I love Riven. I ADORE Riven. It is without a doubt my favorite game ever. The world is absolutely fascinating. It’s alive, it has depth, it has history, it makes sense. I have never again, in all my years of gaming, found a game that managed to draw me in as deeply as Riven did. The puzzles were sometimes fiendishly difficult, but they made sense, they were connected, they felt organic. I really felt like I was discovering an exotic civilization, picking up bits of their language and customs along the way. (I can still write pretty much any number in D’ni, and I think I still remember a few words and letters, too.)
    The story still felt a bit cheesy, but because I had developed a connection with the world, I also started caring about the characters that inhabited it.

    Granted, Myst is flawed and it’s gotten old. You should probably still play it for its historical value, but you have my permission to skip it. Every gamer owes it to himself to play through Riven once without a walkthrough, though. It requires patience and curiosity, but if you persevere, it’s one of the best gaming experiences you’ll ever have.

    • 22/11/2010 at 21:35 Deccan says:

      Riven is one of the greatest games I’ve ever played for precisely these reasons. It was like it was specially tuned to the themes and experiences my brain finds most delicious.

  45. 22/11/2010 at 15:13 Bureaucrat says:

    I think I enjoyed Myst mostly because my sister was also interested and playing it, and I was much better at solving the puzzles than she was. At the time, opportunities to win points in sibling rivalry were more important to me than good game design.

  46. 22/11/2010 at 15:16 Chaz says:

    Journeyman Project 3 was good though. “Alms for a blind beggaaaaar.”

  47. 22/11/2010 at 15:20 FuzzyKitty says:

    I’m still putting my page in the red book.

  48. 22/11/2010 at 15:34 KilgoreTrout XL says:

    Well then you won’t have any interest in this speed run that kotaku just posted today:

    http://kotaku.com/5695947/this-guy-can-finish-myst-faster-than-i-can-make-a-cup-of-tea

  49. 22/11/2010 at 15:35 Cousin Vinnie says:

    “Its hegemony reigned until the turn of the century, six million victims, and never an apology.”

    Am I the only one to find that remark a bit tasteless?

  50. 22/11/2010 at 15:40 Dervish says:

    Haha, oh wow. Such levels of hipster scorn in this thread.

    “Myst is shit because I suck at puzzles and reading is hard.” Oh, and the puzzles are apparently both mechanical AND illogical at the same time. Figure that one out.

    Troll harder, guys. And stop pretending like you can make any progress in a LucasArts game either without running to GameFAQs.

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:43 Berzee says:

      I shared a low opinion on Myst when I was 7. Was I a 7-year-old hipster? Is it even possible to be a 7-year-old hipster? What’s the youngest you can be and still be a hipster? Is it possible to dislike a game without being a hipster?

      These are the great questions of our time.

    • 22/11/2010 at 15:49 Dervish says:

      @Berzee
      It’s the reasoning that’s worthy of contempt here, not the dislike per se. At least a 7-year-old’s reactions would be honest in their simplicity–it’s boring, too empty/lonely, not funny, no wacky characters, no explosions, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, etc. Walker, on the other hand, is trying to appear as a man of superior taste while showing that he has none.

    • 22/11/2010 at 17:00 DrGonzo says:

      You realise that wasn’t the point anyone was making? The point was we love reading stories when it’s told through the game. Myst doesn’t do that. It’s just random puzzles stuck together without any thought.

      As for the boring/lonely aspect, that’s definitely not it. I love slow, lonely games and films personally. Hell Stalker is one of my favourite films and its a very lonely and slow film. Myst is an incredibly mac and hipster game itself, so I find that quite amusing. My mac owning parents loved it and spewed all kind of pretentious mac crap about how it was art.

    • 22/11/2010 at 17:21 Dervish says:

      @DrGonzo
      “Without any thought,” lol. Nice try buddy. Yes, Myst had some silly puzzles just stuck in for puzzles’ sake. Now go back to 1993 and try to make a list of other adventure game that did it much better–that would be useful criticism. What you’ll find is that other games got a pass because the tone of those games was much sillier in general.

      This is akin to faulting Half-Life’s levels for being unrealistic in retrospect, when in fact they are better approximations of real-world spaces than any other FPS from that era. And in any case, Riven is still the high point of puzzle/world integration for the adventure game genre.

  51. 22/11/2010 at 15:47 Sigma Draconis says:

    I for one, am glad to have been enlightened on the evils of Myst.

  52. 22/11/2010 at 15:55 Matt says:

    Wow… I must say, this is the first time in my several years of reading this site that I’ve felt personally insulted by one of the contributors here. I like coming here specifically because it’s open-minded and doesn’t accuse people of being the “wrong” kind of gamer because of their tastes.

    “And I hate anyone who likes it. I hate you, and your ghastly taste. ” There’s many things I’d like to say to John right now, but I know better than to be impolite in a public forum.

  53. 22/11/2010 at 16:02 Limewarrior says:

    Jeeze… Haven’t you people heard of walkthroughs? I love the series to death, but all I cared about was the story and exploring the worlds. Riven is my favorite. And I actually beat myst v without a walkthrough so I liked that one too.

  54. 22/11/2010 at 16:02 Brian Manahan says:

    Oh, I guess I was having fun THE WRONG WAY. So sorry my liege.

  55. 22/11/2010 at 16:15 Berzee says:

    And yet…and yet — I think it takes more than saying (with admirable bombast) “This game was boring and confusing and I hate you all!” to become a hipster. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.

  56. 22/11/2010 at 16:16 Weylund says:

    That pretty much sums up my thoughts about Myst in the 90s, John.

    Oh, and the Mac comment is utterly spot on.

    • 22/11/2010 at 16:52 Arthur Barnhouse says:

      Well, Mac gaming in the 90′s wasn’t exactly living large, but we had Marathon, and the Lucasarts games too. Although, I have to say, I really don’t recall an air of smugness about playing games on the Mac. Are you sure you aren’t conflating this with every other thing that Mac owners were smug about?

    • 23/11/2010 at 06:57 Thants says:

      Marathon 2 is still the best FPS Bungie has made.

  57. 22/11/2010 at 16:20 RoTapper says:

    From review: “At the point where gaming had finally advanced enough to allow 3D worlds through which you could move with speed, Myst grabbed that by the throat and throttled it until it squirmed dying on the floor. Once again we were back to clicking on the screen and finding ourselves teleported forward.”

    Isn’t this more of a 1993 tech problem. Sure you could have fast moving action games, but they all looked like Doom at that point. You could do slow and pretty, or fast 2d-sprite worlds on 486 processors. I even thought that the little video scenes when you put the pages in the books where a big deal back then.

    Betrayal at Krondor was out around the same time I think, and followed the same click and advance formula. Slow and sorta-pretty. Point being, I think the speed and good looks game came a few years later.

  58. 22/11/2010 at 16:30 Frye says:

    Myst depended too heavily on the storyline for my taste. Books and movies are generally better at that. Adventure games are for reaching the next bit you haven’t seen yet.

  59. 22/11/2010 at 16:35 Adam says:

    ANyone ever play starship titanic….now that felt like myst…did we hate it?

  60. 22/11/2010 at 16:37 Hmm-Hmm. says:

    Myst was a first in a couple of ways. The type of art, the way it’s all presented (atmosphere), how the puzzles were done. It’s.. I dunno. Perfect? Certainly not. But I would say it holds it’s own.

    It was quite the experience for me as a lad.

  61. 22/11/2010 at 17:11 Basilicus says:

    Myst was solid atmosphere and decent storytelling. Riven is a holy grail of worldbuilding.

    If you find an FPS or 3PS or strategy game that finds you lurking about in the schoolhouse of an alien world in an effort to tease the nuances of their number system out, let me know. Until then, I think Riven wins at creating a world that is different in ways that matter.

    You’re ignoring that Penumbra and Amnesia also owe as much to Myst as any other predecessor.
    And let’s also not forget about the absolutely fantastamazibrilliant Zork: Nemesis, or solid efforts like Myst 3-5, Morpheus, Aura, Temujin, or Journeyman Project. There were a lot of crap games, too, but hey – welcome to gaming. This is a genre whose heyday I really miss, and – like it or not – you can clearly see its influence crossbred with LucasArts’ in more recent adventures like Syberia and The Longest Journey.

    • 22/11/2010 at 17:17 Birdman Tribe Leader says:

      Zork: Nemesis? Can you explain the love for it? It just really turned me off. Maybe it was the slapping the Zork name on something that had no resemblance to other Zork games, maybe it was being stuck in this small area at the beginning and not having any characters to interact with, but I could never get more than an hour into it.

    • 22/11/2010 at 18:16 Basilicus says:

      It didn’t feel like a Zork game in that the humor was clearly missing, but it felt like a Zork game in terms of being in a largely unpopulated world that hinted at decayed empire. Once you figure your way out of that first, enclosed area, the game really opens up without ever losing that feeling of profound loneliness. The puzzles are pretty fantastic and have more to do with deciphering the logic by which the world once operated, and the world had a lot of detail for its time. It was also one of the only Myst-style games that succeeded in being truly spooky throughout its course.

      It was a game that made me feel like an explorer of a forgotten realm, an archaeologist and historian and adventurer whose survival depended on his intellect and curiosity. I don’t even need a full hand to count the number of games that have made me feel that way.

  62. 22/11/2010 at 17:14 Benjamin L. says:

    Myst was fantastic as an adventure game. Love mechanical puzzles. Atmosphere of stranded exploration was great. Anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot a person with a different opinion.

    EDIT: Heck, I blame Half Life 2 for introducing more bad stuff than I do Myst. The influence of Myst is rarely seen in games these days, to be honest.

    • 22/11/2010 at 18:00 Limewarrior says:

      I think half life was influenced by myst in terms of storytelling. Myst/riven put their actors in the world and integrated story without disjointed cutscenes. Both games used this to build immersion.

  63. 22/11/2010 at 17:14 Vavaboom says:

    I remember, whaaaay back when, on the old PC gamer forums I said something in a thread a long the lines of “I feel sorry for the person that has to review the incredibly poor games each month”

    And in reply to my comment, John replied “the wounds are deep” (can’t remember the rest). The point is, now I can clearly see that said wounds really were deep. Very deep

  64. 22/11/2010 at 17:36 Ezhar says:

    Excellent rant :)

  65. 22/11/2010 at 18:03 Comment System says:

    Haters gonna hate.

  66. 22/11/2010 at 18:15 Volrath says:

    Most of you people have no soul, or fucking taste for that matter. Have fun playing your next gears of war and halo clones.

  67. 22/11/2010 at 18:52 frosty840 says:

    It is nice to see John unleashing some of the richly-deserved scorn and loathing on that travesty of a Powerpoint presentation.

  68. 22/11/2010 at 18:53 dogsolitude_uk says:

    I’m rather fond of RealMyst, which I picked up from GOG a while back. On the strength of some of the comments here I (a) clearly need my head examined and (b) should obtain a copy of Riven.

    One of the things I like doing in games is just meandering about and exploring whatever environment the programmers made. This is why I like STALKER, Morrowind, Thief, and why I loved games like Frontier, and in days gone by would try really damned hard to find out what was Under the Drive in Jet Set Willy (that took me *ages*).

    This is also why I didn’t get on with Half Life 2. I just felt like I was on rails the whole time…

    Still, going to get Riven off GOG now :) Toodle-pip…

  69. 22/11/2010 at 18:59 PleasingFungus says:

    I was grinning the entire time I read the review. I am and remain a passionate Riven fan. I see no reason these two things cannot stand together.

    Ahh, Mr. Walker, excellent work. (Though the sheer volume of rage and frustration present in the piece does worry me somewhat for your state of mind – have you had that cream tea yet?)

  70. 22/11/2010 at 19:15 Shazbut says:

    Which game are you more glad exists, Myst or Call of Duty: Black Ops?

  71. 22/11/2010 at 20:14 Bassism says:

    Oh, Myst. I love all the games in the myst series (though I have to agree that Riven is the best of the lot), and I’ve never even come close to finishing any of them. But they are great at giving you a world and saying “hey, check this out” which I really dig. I generally dislike and suck at adventure games of all types, though I also love them, and have played many, rarely all the way through. If nothing else, the Myst games are a fairly unique experience in gaming.

    I remember having a music teacher once upon a time, I think just after Myst 3 came out, who was in no way a gamer. But for a month or two he often brought up the game in class and chatted about it. I don’t know if he ever played another computer game in his life, but he loved Myst. Which probably says a lot of things about a lot of things.

    I can totally understand why a lot of people hate Myst. But I think they’re pretty great, if terribly flawed. And they certainly managed to achieve some sort of commercial success.

    I also remember being fascinated watching the “making of Myst” video when I was younger. Some pretty cool technological achievements there.

  72. 22/11/2010 at 20:25 Polysynchronicity says:

    Someone’s got some anger issues to work out.

  73. 22/11/2010 at 20:31 Phydaux says:

    I really liked Myst. But I can imagine why people would hate it, especially if they have a deadline for a review, and have to get through it.

    It’s not a game to be rushed or played excessively. It’s more like the 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle that comes out at Christmas that you and your family slowly put together, sometimes spending 5 minutes on it other times ages. Enjoying it for what it is.

    • 22/11/2010 at 20:52 Vinraith says:

      It’s true, Myst is mostly enjoyable because of the sheer weirdness of the atmosphere, and a reviewer isn’t going to be able to sit back and enjoy that if they’re trying to force their way through the incredibly obtuse puzzles as fast as possible.

  74. 22/11/2010 at 21:30 The Dark One says:

    The Myst games are the only ones that have been compelling enough to make me go out and read their spin-off books.

  75. 22/11/2010 at 21:34 phlebas says:

    Oi, you can’t blame Myst for Watchmaker. Watchmaker was a half-witted bastard child of Gabriel Knight, with scripted conversations, visible player-characters, inventory puzzles and arbitrary plot-based triggers for events.
    Sometimes ‘screw telling a story’ takes you to good places. Screw telling a story, let’s make a game. Screw telling a story, let’s make a world.

  76. 22/11/2010 at 21:42 Vinraith says:

    @John Walker

    We hate you too buddy, we hate you too. :)

  77. 22/11/2010 at 22:04 Carra says:

    I couldn’t get myself into the myst-like games (atlantis, myst & riven spring to mind.

    I had a lot more fun playing adventure games like Monkey Island & Broken Sword.

  78. 22/11/2010 at 22:11 Lambchops says:

    I avoided Myst. I managed to not get it free with anything (presumably because I was a young lad and not actually buying anything).

    When I was old enough to buy games despite enjoying adventure games the Myst games never grabbed me. Their boxes looked dull compared to others surrounding them and they just looked a bit po faced and taking themselves too seriously to my young eyes.

    So I bought Huygen’s disclosure instead. Which was quite possibly more po faced and even more terrible gameplay wise but did feature zebras with a giant eye and a massive crabby spider thing along with it’s shit puzzles, terrible cliches and one of the worst aiming systems to ever grace a game.

  79. 22/11/2010 at 22:30 Hulk Handsome says:

    Half-Life did the whole “screw telling a story” thing, too. I didn’t even have journals to explain what the hell was going on, stuff just happened.

  80. 23/11/2010 at 05:07 Faxmachinen says:

    This comment thread is like an IQ scale right here.
    Seriously though, I think many of you who hated it were too much in the mindset of playing it like a game; the only thing considered progress was beating the puzzle and getting to the next level. Add “and then write about it”, and you’ve got the job description of a reviewer.

    On a different note, am I the only one who thinks the Myst intro is one of the most original pieces of storytelling to date? You’re not Bob the carpenter from New York, wife and two kids. You didn’t just wake up with amnesia in the middle of everything. But you aren’t nameless soldier #247 with no backstory either.
    You’re in the middle of nothing, a starry void. It doesn’t need elaboration. It’s starry. And voidy. Besides, a book just fell from a crack in the very void itself, and it’s not exactly your average Oxford Dictionary. The ramblings of the previous owner may not have made much sense at all, but they seem to describe something of profound importance to someone, somewhere. Who cares? You have a book with glowing pictures. Something to explore. In time, you will come to understand. And that’s what it’s all about.

  81. 23/11/2010 at 07:33 Mewler says:

    Wow, this got to be the first time a RPS article has differed much from my own opinion, what with seeing Deus Ex as the holy grail of all things awesome and game related. But I can understand how John has such a deep seated hatred for all First Person Immersive Adventure games, so I can forgive him for that, but honestly, has there been comment thread so opposed to the article here before?

    On another note, I think modern game design can learn a LOT from Myst, or at least its sequels. Its not about saving the world. The protagonist isn’t a space marine, nameless soldier, or even a nanoaugmented secret-agent solving all his (or very rarely her) problems with a shotgun, or electric prod. Its just some guy exploring a abandoned worlds, each with there own distinct, surreal yet strangely realist landscapes not a war-torn third world city, or nameless warehouse. The gameplay at least in the sequels, revolves around understanding the world that your placed in and the mind of its creator or inhabitants, not killing them.

    These are all things I’d love to see more of in modern games, and yes people are doing these things. The indie art-game community is reinventing a lot of the same stuff as Myst and Riven were doing 17 years ago. Take Dear Ester, add some puzzles and what do you get? If Myst was released today, it would certainly be the new indie art game that everybody loves. And probably be a HL2 mod.

    One thing I’m surprised no-one has mentioned yet! The lead writer on Myst 3: Exile was Mary De Marle, current lead writer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. So anybody curios to how good a writer she is should play Exile or Myst 4. My verdict? Best video game writer working in the industry today. Saveedro was an excellent character.

  82. 23/11/2010 at 13:08 foodstamp says:

    I… I liked myst. I still nightmares about that stupid library on the other hand. So many useless books, and you felt obligated to read them all.

    Although it had nothing on riven. Riven literally sparked my imagination back to life. Not too many games come along with that sort of concept work.

  83. 27/11/2010 at 13:52 basil says:

    When I read things like this I wonder why don’t they let Jim write the entirety of RPS and sack the rest of miserable hacks.

Comment on this story

XHTML: Allowed code: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Respond to our gibber

Read our finest words

Making It With Science: A TUG Interview

Search for clues

Play indie, mods, demos

Browse the archive