Just played it... it is
bad. This is a shoddy port. It offends me with its lack of respect for the original. It's sloppy:
In the original Myst, there were occasions when an animation would be a pixel off. It'd be understandable if those bugs were left in, but ideal if they fixed them. Instead, it happens more often in this version. On a screen with a resolution of 256 x 192, a one-pixel misalignment looks quite ugly, and having it happen all the time just makes the game look like crap. On the piano in the spaceship, for instance,
several of the keys have this bug.
While the touch screen use is nice, it doesn't add much to the experience... and the lack of the context-sensitive cursor means that there's no indication of what items are clickable, or where you can click to move.
All of the new features are poorly implemented. "Zoom" shows you a zoomed-in version of the middle of the touch screen on the top screen. It only shows the dead center of the screen, and there's no way to change that. Furthermore, this "zoomed in" view is pixelated because all they did was blow up the image that had already been shrunk to DS size. There is no point at all to have the feature. When you're looking at a written note, or one of the journals, the zoom function actually works as one would expect, but why not just disable the icon outside of those situations? Why BS it like that?
The option to "take notes using the touch screen" brings up a little on-screen keyboard. The keyboard fills the bottom half of the touch screen, and the notes you type appear in the top half of the screen. The top screen is just the Myst logo. There's a backspace button, but as far as I can tell, no other way to go back to edit previous lines. All caps, no punctuation. Oh, and you can only type nine lines. It doesn't scroll or anything.
The map is pretty small and hard to read and there's no way to zoom in on it, but it's okay. I just wonder if I can only make out what the text says on it because I already know. It's still better to look at than the poorly resized logo that's on the top screen most of the time, but it seems like anytime I do anything, the map goes away and the logo comes back. Meh.
Even if I forgive the fact that they did no touching-up of a nearly 15-year-old game, even if I forgive the fact that the "Midway" logo when you turn it on is the higher quality than any of the animations in the game, heck, even if I forgive the face that they letterboxed the whole thing so that the resized images don't even take up the full screen... it's still a mind-bogglingly terrible port.
I could go on, but why bother? It's already feel like I'm spending more time playing this port than anyone at Midway ever did.
This is going to be some people's first impression of Myst... That makes me
sad.
Some pictures:
What time is it?
It's crap o'clock!
There's only one "pressed state" for the light switch, regardless of whether or not the lights are on.
This is the zoomed in version. It's not my webcam's fault that you can't read the titles off the books... they're genuinely indistinguishable.
No comment.
If my cheap webcam shots aren't crisp enough for you, check out the
official screenshots. That Myst logo on the upper screen in most of those shots is there all the time, unless you activate the zoom or map features.
Let me please emphasize that the original Myst wasn't
this terrible. If you're curious about the game, this is not the version to play.
Any questions?
AncientBoi
Sicklyboy
Sonic Angel Knight
Xdqwerty
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