Spoilers start later, this bit's safe
Anyone in the chat this weekend will have seen me talking about and playing Myst and Riven. I'd wholeheartedly recommend both of these games to literally anyone who uses a computer more than the bare minimum of what's possible these days (so you).
I must add though if you're on Vista or Win7 you may need to install a virtual machine with XP to run them as they're veeeery old games (Myst is legally old enough to drink in the UK!)
Microsoft offer a very painless solution themselves for Windows 7 users called XPMode. Overall installing the VM then installing Riven on it took way less time than downloading pretty much any game released in the last 10 years so it's NOT a hassle at all. (less hassle than installing steam the first time you bought a steam game without realising it needed steam)
I wouldn't recommend the later sequels to anyone unless they'd enjoyed Riven. So start from the beginning if you're gunna start anywhere. I personally enjoyed all the games thoroughly up until number 5 which I thought was just a total waste of time. The thing Myst did so well was totally beautiful immersive environments by pre-rendering all of their art and using live action actors. You can't get better than an actual actor, yet for some crazy reason they decided to make the final game in the series fully real time and visual quality (and immersion) went to shit.
Spoilers from here on! Myst games are puzzle games and reading about the solutions WILL ruin your experience!
The fire marble puzzle in Riven, oh man. What a puzzle. I remember the first time I played these games, I was too young to understand that I might need to write stuff down (or even really read the journals in the game) and my dad kept a journal with the solutions hidden from me. Having played Riven again today and doing it mostly from scratch rather than memory (like I never actually figured out the marble puzzle myself in the past I just looked it up) I found the experience incredible.
Having to keep a journal whilst playing a game? That's something that needs to happen again. There's no way I'd be able to finish Riven without writing down all the different eye symbols, numbers and codes.
Myst could be done on a postit really, which is where Riven excels over it's predecessor (not to mention better graphics, story and pretty much everything else)
I read the books too, I enjoyed though but I never tried URU, based on my dislike of Myst 5 I'm guessing I wouldn't enjoy that either.
Anyhow, just some of my thoughts.
Anyone in the chat this weekend will have seen me talking about and playing Myst and Riven. I'd wholeheartedly recommend both of these games to literally anyone who uses a computer more than the bare minimum of what's possible these days (so you).
I must add though if you're on Vista or Win7 you may need to install a virtual machine with XP to run them as they're veeeery old games (Myst is legally old enough to drink in the UK!)
Microsoft offer a very painless solution themselves for Windows 7 users called XPMode. Overall installing the VM then installing Riven on it took way less time than downloading pretty much any game released in the last 10 years so it's NOT a hassle at all. (less hassle than installing steam the first time you bought a steam game without realising it needed steam)
I wouldn't recommend the later sequels to anyone unless they'd enjoyed Riven. So start from the beginning if you're gunna start anywhere. I personally enjoyed all the games thoroughly up until number 5 which I thought was just a total waste of time. The thing Myst did so well was totally beautiful immersive environments by pre-rendering all of their art and using live action actors. You can't get better than an actual actor, yet for some crazy reason they decided to make the final game in the series fully real time and visual quality (and immersion) went to shit.
Spoilers from here on! Myst games are puzzle games and reading about the solutions WILL ruin your experience!
The fire marble puzzle in Riven, oh man. What a puzzle. I remember the first time I played these games, I was too young to understand that I might need to write stuff down (or even really read the journals in the game) and my dad kept a journal with the solutions hidden from me. Having played Riven again today and doing it mostly from scratch rather than memory (like I never actually figured out the marble puzzle myself in the past I just looked it up) I found the experience incredible.
Having to keep a journal whilst playing a game? That's something that needs to happen again. There's no way I'd be able to finish Riven without writing down all the different eye symbols, numbers and codes.
Myst could be done on a postit really, which is where Riven excels over it's predecessor (not to mention better graphics, story and pretty much everything else)
I read the books too, I enjoyed though but I never tried URU, based on my dislike of Myst 5 I'm guessing I wouldn't enjoy that either.
Anyhow, just some of my thoughts.