Not a rail gun in sight (Myst 3 - Exile (PC))

Member Name: sharrowing

Product:	Myst 3 - Exile (PC)
Date:	30/04/02 (133 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Attractive, Challenging, Polished

Disadvantages: Sedate, Not innovative

What do people have against the Myst series? I'll re-phrase that: what to so-called PC gaming experts have against the Myst Series?

Ok, so they're not fast and furious. They don't have any rail guns or plasma cannons. They don't have the latest whizz-bang 3D graphics. All the things that conventional wisdom - i.e. the gaming press - want in a good PC game is lacking in the Myst series.

But they do have one think in bucket loads: atmosphere.

The latest instalment in the Myst series is no exception. You start looking out at a stark landscape of mountains. A voice calls to you and you turn to see a woman standing behind you holding a baby. This demonstrates the first innovation in Myst III. Up until now you were limited to fixed viewpoints of your surroundings, now you can swing the camera around for a full 360 degree panoramic view.

These views are static, but a clever touch is that movies of real people are mapped onto the backgrounds seamlessly. So that the woman (who turns out to be the wife of Altrus, a character you first met in Myst I) moves around and talks to you even as you re-align the camera to point at her.

Soon you are drawn in to a plot revolving around a stalwart of the Myst series - linking books. A linking book takes you to the world described in its pages, and Altrus is able to summon up new worlds just by meticulously describing them in a linking book.

The Exile of the title is Saavedro, who has been trapped for years in one of these worlds by Altrus's sons, and plans terrible revenge. Saavedro, incidentally, is played by Brad Dourif, who you may recognise from films like Alien Resurrection and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The player gets drawn into a series of puzzles set by Saavedro designed to trap the sons of Altrus. The puzzles are all pretty devious, and set across five worlds, each with it's own look and feel. One world is designed like a ersatz p
inball machine, another revolves around the use of hydroelectric power. Every world is fully realised, and you get the feeling that these are real places, with realistic (if not practical) machines and devices.

If you're the kind of person who enjoys a good knotty puzzle or conundrum, you'll love Myst III. If you prefer gun-toting to brain-teasing, there are plenty of other games on the market to cater for your tastes.

I liked all of the Myst series. They never test the envelope of PC Gaming, but concentrate on what they're good at: creating fascinating puzzles set in well-realised environments.

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