Saturday, June 28, 2003

Grim Fandango

For being published in 1998 by Lucas Arts, it still hasn't lost its charm (other then it runs in 640x480). Very cool game so far (I'm just into year 2, currently trying to figure out how to get on the boat in the morning).

Downside is that a lot of the puzzles are simplistic to know that you've solved them - e.g. once you do the right thing, you go immediately to a cut-scene. One of the joys in Myst was that even if you had done the right combination of things - you wouldn't know until you flipped that last switch to give it a whirl.

Biggest complaint so far was the 2 hour install time (copy protection was probably interfering), but that's probably a machine specific glitch (running it on WinXP, maybe the DVD drive doesn't like the CD).

Took me about 12 hours to finish everything, but that's because I resorted to a walkthrough guide when I got stuck on something for too long.

posted by Wuphon's at 8:55 AM

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Myst3 (A Bit of a Yawn)

Eh, I wasn't impressed with Myst3 at all. The most frustrating of the ages was the huge forest inside a tree age where it was next to impossible to keep your bearings or find the paths. That *really* interfered with the enjoyment of figuring out the puzzles because you'd mentally connect two things and then have to spend 10-15 minutes trying to remember the obtuse path to get back to the other bit of the puzzle.

The mechanical age with the asian/oriental style artwork and the tracks for the ball to roll on was very cool. Felt like the best of the bunch, *except* that in order to test your result, you had to watch a lengthy animation and it was difficult to see just how your changes affected the result. (The 6-wheel doohickey that juggled the crystal ball as the worst offender.)

The voltaic age wasn't bad, but it was pretty linear and a lot of flip-this-switch and see no effect. There were too many wires and pipes around which gets in the way of being able to see how machine A connects up to machine B. (For comparison, think back to the rocketship on Myst Isle, or the network of pipes in one of the other ages of the original Myst. Even the isle in Riven with the steam boiler kept it simple enough that you could mentally trace the pipes to figure out what connected to what.) It was extremely difficult to figure out how switch A affected situation B. Unlike Myst and Riven, there were no graphical signs/hints as to what a control might do - so that was a major mark against all of the puzzles.

On the technical side, I was never able to [Alt-Tab] out of the program, which meant that when it locked up (as it frequently did) I was forced to power off / power on. (This was even with the 1.22 patch under WindowsXP.)

realMYST is still the best out of the series, followed by Riven. Myst3 runs a distant 3rd.

posted by Wuphon's at 12:14 PM