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Myst III: Exile Review
Here's what you get when you order Myst III:
- One thin cardboard box
- One plastic case containing four CDs
- One advertising flyer
No instruction manual, no installation guide, nothing to get you into the spirit of Myst, no handy journal to write down your thoughts, just a CD case rattling around inside a box that is about 10 times larger, by volume, than necessary to hold the case.
So here's my evaluation of the game itself:
- Gameplay: 0/10
- Graphics: 0/10
- Sound: 0/10
- Value: 0/10
The reason for the above ratings is that as far as I can tell, they shipped a set of drink coasters rather than a set of CDs with an actual game on them.
To be more specific, Ubisoft shipped a game with a massive number of crippling bugs. The Safedisc copy protection caused problems with dozens of models of CD-ROM drives - players' CD-ROMs weren't compatible with the purposeful errors caused by SafeDisc, and so they weren't able to play the game at all. Nor could you play the game if your CD-ROM was lettered higher than H: - after all, no one has a drive higher than H:, right? (Ubisoft has released a patch for this problem.) Nor could you play the game in hardware mode if your card doesn't support 32-bit color, even though the game box prominently proclaims support for 16-bit. Many people have also reported problems with choppy/broken video - this problem occurs on numerous different setups and even very fast machines. Most crippling of all, if you have an Intel, S3 or SiS video card or video chipset, your game won't run at all (similar problems have also been reported with several other video chipsets, such as ATI Rage cards).
On a huge number of machines, perhaps a third of all desktops and an even larger percentage of notebooks, all of which nominally support the requirements listed on the box, Myst III simply won't run.
Ubisoft has been stringing customers along about a promised patch for the video problem (no patch is planned for the fact that many of their customers can't use the game due to Safedisc - that's a "feature") - the expected date for the M3 patch (named due to the error message) has slipped four times now, the latest being another week into the future. I've given up and am returning the game. Probably the retailer will throw a fit about taking back an opened box, although, hey, isn't Safedisc supposed to prevent people copying the discs and returning the game, and since the company admits that their game won't run, there would be no point to keeping a copy of the game anyway. I'm now afraid to uninstall the game, since many people have reported the complete destruction of their Windows system upon uninstallation of Myst III. (My source for most user reports are the forums at Rivenguild.com).
Overall, Myst III is a fiasco. You won't see reviews like this one in regular gaming publications, which depend upon pre-releases of games - that review was written before Myst III was officially released, and if a gaming pub. got in the habit of writing bad reviews, the PR people won't send them advance games any more.
I don't really care. What the gaming industry needs is more reviews like the above. Someone didn't spend the time on quality assurance, and it shows. Unless the company gets negative feedback about it, the next game company won't put the time into quality control either. Returns have got to hurt the most for software companies, but they're usually insulated from returns by simply refusing to accept them. Bullshit. If the retailer we bought this from doesn't want it back, I'll see if a suit in small claims court won't change their mind, because selling a "product" that is acknowledged by the manufacturer not to work at all is fraudulent.
I wish all gaming publications would write reviews like this. I know that they encounter problems too, but somehow the problems never get mentioned in the final glowing review, where every game ever made rates between an 8.5 and 9.5 on a ten-point scale (except maybe games reviewed by Old Man Murray). Tell us about the problems, game reviewers. It'll make for better games in the long run.
do you have evidence to back that up? or are you just blowing smoke out of your ass? from the pc game mags and sites i have read, they do give bad reviews to those games that deserve it. remember daikatana? ever consider the reason i won't see your kind of review is that it is poorly written, smug, self-important drivel?
you always think there is some grand conspiracy to hide the truth from you with every story.
It strikes me that this particular 'game review' wasnt so much a review than a bitching session about how your hardware does not support the game. So rather than look at gameplay, graphics, and story, you've managed to jade a whole lot of individuals simply by ranting about hardware. Why this was posted as a slashdot story I really don't know. So I decided I'd write my own review and maybe give a little credit to this thread... mind you, this review is anything resembling in depth, but I do my best ;).
Story
The story behind Exile is simple, and ties back to the roots of Myst and Riven. It is explained early in the game, and if you pay attention to the casual references and clues, you will see quite a few things link together into a larger picture. So I don't really feel bad about highlighting it here.
Apparently, after the destruction of Riven and your tussle with Gehn (man did I have issues with that ending), Atrus has managed to ocne again establish contact with the D'ni people, and has written a new age for them, so that the culture might survive without being shackled by their history. You arrive, invited to this trip, and after some basic interaction, the linking book is stolen and you get thrown into a plot to retrieve it.
Now, from what I have seen of this and other stories, it is good. Not great, not spectacular, but it makes a good tale and you can work your way into the worlds without too much difficulty. The villian is bitter and perhaps slightly psychotic, and why exactly he's making you bounce through all these worlds does not really seem to be clarified... or rather, seems a bit far fetched.
Graphics
As expected the rendered graphics are stunning in their detail, though the occasional addition of a hand-drawn still throws you off. While the quality of the rendering has only marginally improved since Riven, the addition of the 360 Degree pan is a real bonus for those who really want to get a closer look at the world. This is something that Presto Studio's has done before, with the third installment of their 'Journeyman Project' series, but in Exile they apparently decided to not include animated 'walk' movies between the various locations. A pity, but understandably so, given the restraints of CD capacity.
Gameplay
Now, this is the subject where I am, unfortunately, rather more dissapointed. The same mechanical puzzles and strange processes which allow one to proceed through the world have taken a hit for the simpler side of things. The first world's few puzzles are easy to solve for the observant and alert, and it took me less than 30 minutes. Of course, as a veteran of the Myst series, I knew that Sound and color were elements commonly found, but nevertheless it did not impress me too much with the required leaps of logic and analysis.
Other than that, the meny remains pretty much the same. The entire game requires only your mouse for interaction, and is simple and straightforward. A 5 year old could figure out how to explore the worlds, and thus the interface complexity does not detract from the story, as you continually squint at the keyboard in the dark room you're playing this in to find that 'one' key. One mouse, two buttons, that's it. Also, the inclusion of the ever so popular zip modes allows you to cut down lengthy travel times (thank god for that on the balance puzzle).
Ratings
So, here's what I give it:
Story: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Overall: 7/10
All in all, Myst: Exile is a pretty entertaining game, and lacks the endless frustration of previous versions. The visually stunning ages combined with the simple interface make it easy for navigation and exploration. Myst fans and puzzlers will be entertained by this, but first-person-shooter fans can leave their money at home.
Mike K
The Poo must Flow
Okay, so you had some trouble running the game. Let's try to at least get the facts straight. In the four CD case, there is, miracles of miracles, an installation book.
I've been playing it for a few days now, on my laptop, and haven't had any problems. Not with install, not with gameplay, nor with video support.
For those of you who wish a review of the game, rather than the packaging, here you go:
Myst III: Exile is the third of the Myst series. Although not produced by Cyan, it has the same feel to Riven as Riven did to Myst. The graphics are beautiful. Instead of the slide show that the previous games had, you have a bit more freedom to look around. You are still limited to going in only certain places, but once you get to each stopping point, you have the ability to look around in full 3d.
The puzzles are similar in nature to those in Riven. A few of them are trivial, but others will get you scratching your head until the "Oh, of course!" moment.
The actors do a good job. It doesn't seem like a game, more like a movie. The lines are delivered with believable feeling, not the typical overacted, high school level "drama" that you typically see in games. The main antagonist, Saavedro, is played by Bradford Claude Dourif (Piter De Vries from the original Dune movie, Grima Wormtongue from the upcoming LOTR trilogy).
The plot is typical of the series and most other games: Save the World. In the interest of not spoiling the game, I will not give anything away, however, there are a few possible endings.
For those of you who need the help, there are already several walkthroughs available at most most game sites.
Ratings
Graphics: 9/10 A few bad masks for the water effects hurt the suspension of disbelief.
GamePlay: 7/10 An actual plot! It's even mostly interally consistent! Some tasks are highly repetitive.
Difficulty: 7/10 You can't kill yourself early on, but you can get frustrated by having to redo the same steps over and over.
Stability: 10/10 No crashes, no hiccups, no stuttering video. Others have reported problems, so make sure your system meets the requirements on the box and update your video drivers.
Overall, I'd give it an 8 out of 10. It is not a ground breaking as the original, nor did it advance the series as much as Riven, but it is a very enjoyable game for those who like puzzles.
I had bought Myst III as a present for my wife to play on her laptop. I figured out about 3 seconds after installing the game that this was impossible. (M3 segfaults aout the wazzoo) I tried to install it on my desktop, and it worked somewhat, but the game play was choppy, and I was forced to run the game in software mode, even though my video card was said supported. After reading the included README file, I saw that they knew about these issues and said NOT to return the game to stores because they would be releasing a patch soon. SOON? WTF? Who had this bright idea? "Lets put on the box that that their hardware is supported and release the game even though we know it doesn't run on half the systems out there!" *end sarcasim* Don't sell the game unless it will run. This was a verry bad move by presto and because of it I will never buy from them again. I mean, are they going to reimberse me for the gas money? (I have to drive quite a distance to CompUSA because I live in the country side) and what about the 2 hours I had to argue with the manager to get a refund? If there is laws protecting companies from software being returned by customers, shouldn't there be a law saying if it's bad software we can return it? I mean, who want's to burn CD's of crappy games?
Wishful thinking of course, but I'm behind you 100 (3).
:)
Of course, the only place in publications that you get true opinions is somewhere where money doesn't matter, ie, the web (or at least, small sites on the web, not something like gamespot, or any place that uses advertising from game companies (or the company related to whatever they are reviewing) as income.
Personally I say Mod This (the parent of this comment that is) Up!
(paraphrased from another source)
Really. Who cares how fast a new hot-rod can go from 0-60 if there's a 50% chance that stepping on the gas pedal will make it explode?
Lots of people do this anyway, they just phrase it differently. They say "yes, I think I'd like to buy a copy of windows today".
:)
Um, I count any unreadable CD as surprising. CD technology is pretty well understood, and somebody has to work had to make a CD that will fail in some percentage of CD-ROMs but not others. No, I'd say the onerious copyright mechanism is noteworthy and certainly something I hope other manufacturers don't start to repeat. Not only is that protection mostly worthless (I bet there was still 0-day Warez out for this game), but it just makes the entire experiance more hostile for the user.
Personally, nothing turns me off on a company faster than user-hostile or invasive practices, which is why I used to crack all of the copy protection on the software I bought (especially when it consisted of looking up work x on page x in the manual!), even though I never actually copied it for anyone else.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
- Boy Gets Game
- Boy can't run game
- Boy posts to Slashdot bitching about game, and gives review of how he can't get the game to run...
Ok, so you can't get Myst III to work... OK, so many people can't get Myst III to work. So what? If you want a game to work right out of the box, get a console.OK, now the good points of the review...
Overall, this review left me with that empty box feeling. I can understand the anger, but this is the wrong forum for that.
*Please* follow up on this story and tell us if the retailer took the software back. To me, that will be a lot more interesting than the idea that someone shipped buggy software. With all the NO RETURN policies that exist, I've always wondered if they are enforceable in cases like this. THANKS!
-Derek
The man has a big ego. He has some massively high ambitions for his game. (BCM is staggering in scope). But he does seem to do a damned good job of standing behind his work and trying to deliver on his promises.
Ultima IX post-patch review. There are places that do this sort of thing.
Actually this is precisely the type of review that I needed. I loved the original Myst game, but I haven't had the time or the inclination to game since then (the fact that I no longer have a computer running Windows hasn't helped). However, if the new Myst were as cool as the old Myst I would not only consider buying the game, I would seriously consider paying money for a Microsoft OS.
It would appear that I don't need to bother...
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
My wife (not incredibly technically illeterate) installed this on my AMD K6III-450 and Voodoo3 2000 16MB card with an older 32x cdrom on Windows 98. She's had 0 problems with the game and is actually quite happy with it, and enjoys playing it.
It's too bad Michael couldn't get past his technical problems to write a review of the gameplay itself rather than technical issues surrounding the game.
-jay
The original poster was suggesting people send mail to Cyan expressing disappointment that they handed over control of their world to idjits. Before amending or deleting the post, try reading it. :)
Normally a gaming company doesn't have to plan for 2000 different CD mechanisms. This developer screwed themselves by going with a bad implementation of safedisc. It isn't the architectures fault. They could have used other means of copy protections (that is equally as easily broken as safedisc) that wouldn't interefere with a high percentage of drives.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
There are plenty of decent hardware configurations that the game pukes on. Your implication that people who are having problems with the game have substandard hardware only encourages game companies to release less and less compatable games. You'll change your story when it happens to you.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
Christ man, have you ever tried to install Qmail?
What has this to do with QA? I installed qmail by following the instructions in INSTALL, and I got a working tested qmail install. Now, changing how it works is a little arcane, but no more than other unix mailers, and at least in a more logical (to me) way.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Was that a writer reviewing a game, or a writer reviewing his own review of a game?
P.S. Slashdot needs more posts like the one above.
--
Breakfast served all day!
> I guess you never read the magazine "Amiga Power". A UK based Amiga games mag that really didn't hold back in their reviews.
l is publishers deciding the market was dead, then coming up with excuses for it and blaming other people.
There's a lot of Amiga Power stuff on
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/ (including the scoring system http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/info/marks.html
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/bad/summit.htm
(It's frame based, so the latter two links lose some context.)
--
rant
- becuase after reading it, I still know nothing about the game. Call it a rant, call it a troll, call it whatever you want, but don't call it a review when it's just a complaint. It's by Michael, I wouldn't even have read it, except the title and leader paragraph make me think that it's a review of MystIII. And now that I've read it, I know just as much about MystIII as I did before I read it - absolutely nothing.
Acceptable other titles:
Any of these titles, or similar titles, would have told be this was crap before I wasted my time clicking on the link that added another reader to Michael's stories, bored myself by skimming over the drivel, and getting to the end having gained nothing. If he wants to rant about it, that's fine, but don't try to dress up a rant as a review when you never got to review it. The only think Michael reviewed was the installation process.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
I would mod you up if I had any mod points and could mod an article I commented in :)
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
...it's a grumpy little boy complaining that he didn't get to play his new game. Let's look at your logical scoring and rating:
We also have to add a few scores you forgot:
OSDN, if you read these posts, I would be happy to make my editorial services available to you for much less than what Michael is probably making. I'm actually technically literate, and having graduates from high school, have learned to express my opinion on subjects in both a resonable and non-condescending tone. If you wish to speak further with me, my contact information is in my user profile.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Actually, this was a very helpful review, and if a game is so fucked that it won't run, then noting the fact that it won't run should be the sum total of the review.
Case in point: Every person I've spoken to about Ultima 9 says the same thing: The game is great, but it doesn't matter since it crashes so damn much. The poor quality of the software makes the game itself irrelevant, and the same thing here.
Really. Who cares how fast a new hot-rod can go from 0-60 if there's a 50% chance that stepping on the gas pedal will make it explode?
Good review, Michael. Though I still don't like you.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yet another idiotic michael posting.
/.'s leadership tolerates you, I've yet to figure out.
Instead of claiming this to be a review of the actual game, why didn't you just be honest and tell the reader that it was a biased, one-sided whinefest?
Your style of reporting has always disgusted me. Why the rest of
The very essence of news reporting, which you have yet to learn, is to report the facts with as little bias as possible. While this is technically almost impossible, it's almost as if you don't even try.
For the sake of slashdot's readership (the part that actually cares, that is) either learn some basic journalism skills or get another job. Hopefully one where I won't have to listen to your idiotic opinions all day long.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
say Like gameplay ?? He gave it a zero, so maybe he should have said not rated due to the fact it would not run. I had much the same problems and returned the game to COMPUSA of all places who took it back WITHOUT QUESTION......I REPEAT COMPUSA TOOK IT BACK AND GAVE ME CREDIT ?!?!?!
You know a GAME IS FSCK'd if the store will refund your money.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Is our company motto around here :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
yes but only if they wanted to run it on an GPL OS :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You should try this for real...I got a good laugh and the point :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Note : I am an avid gameplayer and mapper, and for a job I install and configure M$ OS's up to Datacenter 2k. The [problems here aer beyond a little FIX.
OK so let me back Michael up. I got the game to install on my machine..AMD 1.3 256 mb ddr2100, 32x cd, 10x dvd, nvidia geforce 2 gts 64 ddr.
It would not install on either of my CD or DVD, luckily I had an old 10x sony cd that I installed and it read fine.
Once the game was installed it Blue screened about 9 times with various errors.
The FINALLY it started RUNNING, at about 3 fps.
My sound blaster live sounds like an AM radio with HEAVY interferance.
I would honestly like to say somthing good about this game BUT I CAN'T. UBI support is HORRIBLE.
The first option was for me to re-install my OS. I was told that would solve the problem.LOL I bet it would.
The second option was to re-install the same game over again, I MUST have made a mistake, YES I DID, I PAYED FOR THIS.
The opening scene crawled by and I screamed.....
I would like to give you more gameplay issues but I could not play the game.
I too am returning this STINKY PYLE...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Two words: Battleship Earth. I was very disappointed that Ebert and Roeper didn't vote it the worst movie of last year. That honour went to Adam Sandler. (Sorry for being off topic)
Help fight continental drift.
So once again this week, we've got the editors of /. reviewing a PC game.
Isn't this the same group that as recently as a year ago, refused to view certain multimedia clips that were related to submissions, because they didn't want to have to boot their machines in Windows? The same group, that foams at the mouth over everything that MS does?
One would think that by now, there would be comprehensive reviews of every Loki product. As well as lots of reviews of every other game that someone released for Linux.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Actually seems to love trashing bad products.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Though I am by no means a fan of the SafeDisc copy protection, your condemnation of its use flies in the face of Slashdot's praise for (guess!) Diablo 2. Diablo 2, among quite a few other popular games such as Age of Empires 2, all use the SafeDisc copy protection, so if you can't run Myst III, then you must be missing out on Diablo 2.
t ections_safedisc.shtml
For a (presumably incomplete) list of games that use SafeDisc, go here: http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_pro
You can probably do a simple search on Google to find out what other games use SafeDisc. Yes, it's a "feature". Yes, it causes the game to be unreadable by some CD-ROM drives. But no, it is not a valid reason to specifically blast UbiSoft for a "feature" commonly used today by many other companies in computer games.
Go find a computer that will run Myst III, and you'll find that the graphics and puzzles are great. Wonderful, even. Even the flaky Hewlett Packard I installed it on managed to run it fine. Incidentally, my copy of Myst III came with an instruction manual. You know, in the CD case. Like Riven. Like the original Myst. And it has installation instructions. Just to let you know.
--A
I thought a feature was something that was beneficial to the user, not something that breaks standards and has the potential to make the product I bought totally useless.
I will agree that SafeDisc is in no way directly beneficial to the user. In fact, I cannot currently think up an example where any form of copy protection is directly beneficial to the user, and thus copy protection is not a feature.
That being said, I must point out that copy protection, to some extent, is a necessary evil. After all, companies exist (virtually) solely for profit, and the eternal problem of software pirating drives them to seek ways to prevent a person with a CD burner to become an illegal redistibutor of a product. SafeDisc gives companies peace of mind, and thus there are willing to make more games. Which is a Good Thing.
As far as I know, most CD-ROM drives are fine with reading SafeDisc-ed CDs, though I admit not to know the exact percentage. And please, don't try to cite the volume of forum complaints as some measure of that percentage, since the data is certainly skewed. I have not personally ever run into a problem trying to read a SafeDisc-ed CD. And I prefer this form of copy protection to the old-school look-up-a-random-figure-or-character-string form of copy protection.
So, no, though I call SafeDisc a "feature" (which was meant ironically), it is not a (unquoted) feature, but it is also not a bug. I suppose that "wart" might be a good descriptive term. It's just one of those things that's annoying as hell, but you're simply going to have to accept its existence.
--A
I wish it was open source : I'd fix the bugs myself. Then I could CVS the bug fixes back to them and they can release it to the general public. This would be a much better product if they OSS'd it.
For me to contribute though I would demand that it be released under the GPL license. I have no doubt that they would still do well through tip jars and contributions by thankful individuals.
with pointlessly obscure puzzles and the use of "mystery" to hide the barren slideshow nature of the game, anyone who buys this deserves everything they get.
they should have stopped after 'cosmic ozmo' which shipped on it's own harddisk. their idea of 'gaming' or even 'entertainment' has always been waaaay far of the mark. maybe you have to buy special 'iCyan' cdroms to read the disks?
idiots.
If you don't have any luck, make a pain in the ass of yourself, and maybe they'll find it's just easier to take it back than to put up with you.
If that doesn't work, sue them in small claims court. Should just take up an afternoon of your time, and will cost the store *way* more than the price of the game.
If that still doesn't work, go exchange the game for another copy of the same game every couple days. Again, pretty soon it will have cost the store more not to have accepted your return than to have just accepted it to begin with. I'm sure their policy allows exchanging defective games, and the game is pretty clearly defective.
You may also want to look at the book "Bad Software: What to Do When Software Fails".
Good luck!
My Web Page
Man, that's a good point. And you are marked as a troll. Oh well. Good point anyway.
Don't send the Miller bros. or Cyan spam about a game they did not develop. Myst III was developed by Presto Studios.
Hahahaha, this is the best comment I've read all day.
-B
Just think about it. One who orks cows.
I find it hilarious, and I dont even know what orking is. Ok, time to stop avoiding work....
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Cyan wasn't involved in making the game, and it doesn't have a cool single word title like Myst or Riven. That was warning enough for me to avoid it.
Yes, it's a "feature". Yes, it causes the game to be unreadable by some CD-ROM drives.
I thought a feature was something that was beneficial to the user, not something that breaks standards and has the potential to make the product I bought totally useless.
SafeDisk is not a feature, it's just more consumer-unfriendly "rights" management shit that loudly and happily pisses on interoperability standards.
I believe the correct term for this is "wart" or "bug", not "feature".
C-X C-S
Spoiler or two in here...
I have played the game. I don't know how, since I have an S3 Savage4 and didn't patch it in any way.
Graphically, it was interesting in the sense that it was an improvment over Myst and Riven. But when compared to the real capabilities of gaming systems today, it blew chunks (that's a technical term, don't use it without parental supervision).
The pathways available for moving from one area to another were difficult if not impossible to find at times. Many times during the game, I just moved from point to point clicking on everything and even nothing just to figure out what I must have missed.
Problems in the game range from the simple act of throwing the right switch to the damn near impossible (who the hell would set a trap that was supposed to miss and what animal wouldn't run back into its safe burrow instead?).
Maybe something hinting at the third level of valves would have been nice, too. Perhaps the ability to zoom in on the pressure guage to see if the needle was on the dashes instead of seeing at an angle and hoping.
I think the next time I want a weekend's worth of puzzles, I'll buy a crossword book. At least then I can solve the puzzles themselves instead of walking all over 4 different worlds clicking on every rock and twig I run across.
Since I did get it up and running, I'd rate it more along the following...
Gameplay: 2/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 5/10
Value: 1/10
Overall: 4/10 (unless it doesn't work on your system obviously)
Good for a weekend, but keep a walkthrough bookmarked so you don't break your desk when you pound it in frustration.
Digital Wokan
I wanted to spend 8 years defending the US constitution.
(Of course, there was probably no way for them to know ahead of time that UbiSoft was going to release a shoddy product. But maybe they ought to do something to pressure UbiSoft to correct the situation. And if you don't think there's any way for them to apply pressure, imagine the effect "Creators of Original Myst Say Myst III Sucks" would have on sales.)
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Hell, I expect the actual content in Myst III is pretty good, even if it maybe isn't as good as what the Millers would have done if they'd put their mind to it. It's a shame the publisher it ended up with is so screwed up, that's all.
(What's particularly sad about it is you just know Myst III is going to sell a quingigillion copies anyway, looking at Myst and Riven sales figures. It's just stupid, shortsighted greed on the behalf of the publishers that led them to this idiotic protection scheme. I'll bet they lose more sales due to the installation problems than they ever would have lost from piracy.)
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
One could also point out that it's in their financial interest for UbiSoft to produce a high-quality game that sells better and gets them more royalties. :)
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Cyan Worlds, Inc.
14617 N. Newport Hwy.
Mead, WA 99021-9378
would eventually get there. A letter c/o Warner Books (publisher of the Myst novels) would most likely work, too:
c/o Author Mail
Warner Books
1271 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Who knows, the Millers seem like pretty nice guys -- maybe they'd even put some pressure on UbiSoft to fix things.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Then the real news today is that Loki has started shipping Mindrover!
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In the UK, Future Publishing produce a games magazine called Edge. A friend recently moved to the US, and tells me that it is not available there on newsstands, but that its technical articles are published three months later in the US magazine NextGen.
Edge gives an average game a 5 out of ten. I have seen games get 1, and it is common for games to get 2 or three. It is very rare for a game to get 10, I think the last game to get a 10 was probably Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Edge covers all formats, only reviews what it considers the very best releases each month (8 to 12 titles), and is highly respected by the industry. It is supposed to be a magazine for the games industry as well as the hardcore gamer.
One thing is their favour is that they don't usually carry adverts for games. Whether this is an editorial decision or a consequence of their review policy I don't know. They also don't review things until they are in the shops - they only review final code. For a taste of Edge, have a look at Edge Online.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
I popped in the first disk, installed the whole thing to my hard drive, all 4 CDS and then started play. The only bug i encountered was task (Alt-Tab out to windows) switching caused the mouse to freeze, but other than that there were no glitches. Play was awsome. The only frustrating part was finding that one path in Edanna. The game seemed to flow very well and was very much in the spirit of Myst and Riven. The look of the game and the fx were not as spectacular as RealMyst with the moving clouds and changing skys and weather.
The safe CD crap is very bothersome as is the incorrect hardware requirements in the box. I was upset that the promised plush squee in the Collectors Edition morphed into a tee shirt i can't wear and a little metal squee which cracked the little plastic CD cases.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
you can't use ":" in the name of anything on MacOS: it's the directory seperator character, and will be instantly replaced by "-" if you try to type it.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Very true - this review was more of a gripe about the company, its policies, and the installation process than about the game. I learned more about Michael's system than I did about actual gameplay in MystIII.
Did this "review" help me to decide about buying the game? No. I'd classify this more as a cautionary note - be aware that there are a number of known bugs, that the requirements on the box are not accurate, and that the Safedisk copy protection may not be compatible with your system. In that respect, this note was informative and useful. But as a review, this "review" sucked....
Not all libs are released as RPM or DEBs, and often if they they're out of date or require tweaking wt a Non-RH dist.
If you've never played "There's a hole in my bucket" wt Linux then I'd guess you've never tried to install new software.
I know, I'm crazy.
I cringed when I heard that the terrific Myst series was going to be handed over to Ubisoft for development. Sure they have experience with these kinds of games from the Journeyman Project series, however wasn't anyone paying any attentiont to how many techical/quality assurance problems those games had?! So the fact that Myst III has problems, comes as no surprise. It's too bad, they seems to create great games - If you can get them to run without crashing...
"Life is a series of mistakes and success depends on how well we learn from them." - Isaac Church
Every game as problems of some sort. And while the number of problems encountered in Myst III: Exile might be more than average I the game deserves a fair review.
Myself and a friend just finished Exile last night. The worlds were awesome! The puzzles were well designed, not too easy and not too difficult. The game play was better in Myst III than in Myst or Riven as you had an almost full 360 degree view during your explorations. The absolute coolest thing was the video continuing to play while moving in the 360 degree mode!
The game has problems, granted. On some hardware it works great, on others it won't run. But when you do a game evaluation, please try and look past the problems and do a somewhat objective review.
Bad status == bad game.
If I check crap into source code control and it doesn't work, I get yelled at. Nobody cares if I was tired or angry or anything else at the time, it's my job to do my job.
If they SELL me a crappy game that won't even INSTALL on most machines it is valid to yell at them.
And I found the review helpful. I know I won't be buying it until patches are released at least.
Knowing WHY it sucks doesn't help me. I can't change any of that. Only the fact that it does suck matters.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
I think they have only ever given 3 games 10/10 - two of those were Gran Turismo and Mario 64. This honesty is one of the main reasons I read the magazine (that and the impression that it's written for adults, and game designers, rather than 12 year olds). Certainly makes a change from Spectrum User, when you could tell a game was good if it got more than 95% :).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
This doesn't read like a review. If Michael had a hard time installing it, go to a different machine. Or don't review it at all. Tell us you had problems installing it. Tell us the company wasn't real helpful. But to give scores like you did? That's UNHELPFUL.
I had no problems installing it. I rather enjoyed the game.
But this article reads almost like a flame-attempt due to frustration at installation.
Actually, PC Gamer did review Ultima IX the way you mentioned, and gave it a strong 80%, stating things like "Playing Ultima IX is one of the most immersive experiences you'll ever have on your PC" and "one of the best roleplaying games ever created."
http://www.pcgamer.com/reviews/reviews_592.html
Andrew Plotkin has a much better (in terms of quality of the review itself) review of Myst 3.
Sorry, but I can't stand people who buy the very, very latest game on the market right when it hits the shelves and then complain that it won't run on their four year old computer and/or that it requires numerous bugfixes.
This has happened with numerous great games -- two recent examples are Ultima 9 and Black and White.
I have a 700mhz CPU, ATI Radeon 32DDR AGP card and 416 megs of ram and Black and White STILL crashes.
BW Requirements:
Windows 95/98/2000/ME
Intel Pentium II 350MHz Intel Pentium
64MB RAM
600MB free hard disk space
4x CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
8MB PCI or AGP 3D accelerator
DirectX 7.0a compliant sound card
DirectX 7.0a (supplied on CD)
Keyboard, Mouse
You were saying?
-- iCEBaLM
I gotta say, I appretiated the hell out of it. I almost bought it yesterday at Sams Club (wholesale prices, wholesale quantities. I can buy a side of beef that goes bad just as fast as a 40 pack of hamburgers for half the price!).
What's my point? Well, I have two Sis cards, two Rage cards, and 4 boxes with just enough of a windows partition on each to play games without an emulator. This game might have been a fiasco for me - You see, I'm not a big fan of the Myst series, but my wife is. I was going to buy it for her, but thought I'd ask if she really wanted it before dropping 60 bucks on it. I would have bought it without checking anything other than what was printed on the side of the box.
As the review reads, I would have had hours of frustration trying to get it to run before giving up and uninstalling. Which by all reports could have destroyed my windows partition. Which means I would have to reinstall windblows (95 by the way, I've given up on all the other forks...) and then restore my boot sectors. And knowing me, I would have hosed all 4 of my windows boxes just because by box 2 it would have become personal, and as you know, when it's personal, bad things happen.
Thanks for the review, it saved me some headaches.
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Well, it seems that I had a totally different experience with Myst III. The game itself ran perfectly on my PowerMac G4/400, and I have yet to hear of anyone having problems with the game on a Mac.
What I liked:
- Graphics: As per usual, the game's graphics were simply astounding. The 360 degree rotation technology that was used to produce the game worked flawlessly and the movie clips melded into the scenes perfectly.
- Sound: Again, the audio track of the game was great. The music was not intrusive, and added a lot to the game.
- Gameplay: The gameplay of Myst III was quite good. As oposed to Riven where flipping a switch on one side of the world might change something on the oposite end, all the puzzels and what not were pretty much self contained. Basically, you can immediately see the effects of your actions.
What I didn't like:
- Difficulty: Basically, the only thing I didn't like about the game was that some of the puzzels were too easy.
Overall, in my experience, this game was well worth the money I spent on it. As for the complaint about the packaging, well, quite frankly, Riven didn't come with much else, and I was pleased to see that the four CDs were in a decent jewel case, instead of cheap cardboard. As far as a journal, this game didn't really need one. All I needed was a letter sized peice of paper.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
--Ben
Did a full install on my Mac G3. Ran just great. Motion is smooth, haven't run across any bugs yet, sound is beautiful and movies are crystal clear.
;-)
In fact, I think Michael's machine may be slightly screwy - I tried renaming my Exile CD to 'J:' and it told me it was read only and I couldn't do that. Perhaps he should reinstall OS 9?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
If the game won't install, won't load and won't run, it doesn't have any graphics or any sound. 0/10 is just telling it like it is, or so it seems to me.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Yes.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I have a homebuilt Athlon running win2k. Most of the compnents are reasonably up to date.
I had no problems installing the game, there was a bug at the very end of the game where it complained about a missing node, but I encountered no other bugs. Bad sectors on disks? Reminds me of the old commodore 64 days. I guess if you wait long enough, everything eventually comes back into fashion. And I guarantee you, that bad sector copy protection will delay the warez d00ds by 8 hours, if that. And it will annoy the hell out of everyone else. The rest of what he's complaining about sounds like out of date hardware. I'm not saying that's right, but sadly, it's all too understandable.
Compared with Riven, Myst III is but a pale echo. There wasn't as much work put into the game design, and it shows. It was fun to play, but the "je ne se quois" that Myst and Riven had just isn't there.
Seems that the biggest problem was that the "reviewer" simply made the mistake of trying to play the game on a PC. The game seems to be very dependent on Quicktime VR, so whining about your graphics card is pretty irrelevant. The fact that your CD player can't read the CD comes as no surprise since there are, oh, 2000 different CD mechanisms, plus or minus 500, that a software designer has to plan for when releasing a PC title. That said, the game ran fine when I tried it on every PC and every Mac at my disposal. Perhaps the "reviewers" negative perception of the game was influenced by his own facility (or lack thereof) with computers? Granted, a game shouldn't make it a challenge to install and run the product. But maybe you should look at the quality of the platform you are running it on before you cast stones.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
that the box should have specifically stated what hardware could have problems. So yes, you should be mad. But the "review" is simply a rant, nothing more.
:) and it plays flawlessly. The only problems I've had are related to DirectX, and they happen in every other accelerated game that I have.
I happen to have a box that isn't anything special. K62-500, TNT2-32M, 160M RAM. Guess what? Myst III runs perfectly on it. I installed the game directly to hard disk (a mere 2120 Megs
This is just my personal experience, but I think that's good enough. I did nothing to prepare my system for the game, and I've done nothing to make it playable.
Maybe someone who's actually played the game should review it next time?
Yup... His review did exacly the same thing the game seemed to do. Crapped out without doing anything useful at all, and simply wasted our time.
Michael, apparently you dont read PC gamer. Yes it is a windows game mag, but your 'reviewing' a windows game. Flip through the magazine some time and see how hard they pan certian titles while reserving the best score for only those who truly deserve it. I have found their reviews consistent and reliable and I bet in the next issue or two when they review this game they will give it a score of about 70 percent, which translates into 'Tolerable.'
I don't really mind double posts on
Thanks, I made it up myself.... hehe...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
So this company released a half-assed product. The Slashdot staff was apparently unable to even get the product running, and yet you want details about how it ran? It sounds to me like it didn't run at all, and I'm glad they said so. That's *very* helpful.
As another respondent suggested, I'd love to see a version of Consumer Reports for software. Too much half-assed (&/or bloated) garbage gets released to the public (like, oh, any version of Office from the last five years), and things like UCITA make it difficult or impossible to find this out for ourselves until our money is spent and our computers are corrupted.
I'm not a fan of computer games, but I liked Myst & Riven, and was thinking about getting a copy of Myst III. That's not gonna happen now, because of this very helpful review. You didn't like it, you wanted something more like fellatio, fine. Michael told you where you can find it. Myself, I was very glad to read this review. It was helpful to me.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Err, yeah, exactly. Kinda like going to a movie & the projectionist is trying to make sense of this big box full of film snippets, because the studio couldn't be bothered to edit it all together. If it ain't done yet, then it doesn't deserve a good review.
Software producers get off way too easily here, and should be held accountable for products shipped before they're ready for use. I'll make an exception for free software (which is never really done yet), but if you want to bundle it up & make money off it, then you have to be able to stand behind what you've done. Or half-done, in cases such as this one.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
The great thing about /. is that you get to review the reviewer. In this instance, I find that the reviewer actually missed some of the items that came with Myst III. There is in fact an installation booklet included in the CD case. It is my belief that his "review" is a hoax and is probably only based on hearsay. I think /. owes Myst III and UbiSoft an honest review of the game.
Review of the Reviewer:
Michael's Honesty: 0/10
Michael's Intelligence: 0/10
Based on the fact that he is either lying about his experience or too stupid to find the installation booklet!
If you have to compile all the libraries yourself instead of using an RPM or DEB package, or you have to modify the source, you're obviously attempting to run alpha software. Game reviews don't cover alpha software.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
And yes, I do get pissed when I spend $50 on a new game, and get to enjoy design defects that were purposely introduced.
Are there not consumer-protection legistlations to protect consumers from design defects in a product, especially in the case where the design defects cause it to become more expensive, and reduce the price and profitability of the device.
Well, yeah. If most people can't even get the game into a playable state, then I'd say the playability of the game is pretty sucky, wouldn't you?
Is "playability" a word?
Just saved me $45 bucks and an aggravating evening.
First of all let me say that I have no interest in playing any of the Myst series games.
Second, I can understand being pissed off about buying something that doesn't work. I've had other software that I bought that completely sucked time and energy trying to get it to install let alone play.
However, on the other hand with all the available hardware out there I can't imagine the task of testing all available hardware. Granted that's why you have system requirements, but what about the guy that bought the $20 CDROM from some unknown manufacturer or a single model of a name brand that they never tested that is having a problem with SafeDisc.
Last, but not least, I disagree with this being posted as a review. IMO this should have been more of a "this is a problem, what can we do about it" post.
I probably have 2 complaints with the game - the puzzles are a bit easier than Riven - and it doesn't run under Linux - I hate having to keep this bozo dual-boot partition around just for games
And Myst 3 is the #1 Best Selling Game right now.
Maybe you're the only one having problems? Yes, the general public tends to be bery naive about what games they buy, but typically something doesn't typically make it to #1 in sales without either 1) being really really cheap, or 2) being a good game for most people (word of mouth IS important.)
Windows is not the only OS out there. And Myst III is available on the Macintosh too -- which does not label it's drives A:, B:, C: ...
I guess you never read the magazine "Amiga Power". A UK based Amiga games mag that really didn't hold back in their reviews. Their opinion was that a % scale is utterly meaningless if you never give a game anything less than 70% (Which is what all the other game mags seemed to do).
Consequently, scores of 4% were not unusual. Publishing companies whined, bitched, claimed that AP was "killing the Amiga" (Despite the fact that it was already dying), but they always stuck to their word, despite being sued from time to time and quite frequently having to go out and buy games because the publishing houses wouldn't send them copies any more.
AP was undoubtedly the best magazine I've ever read. It's a shame it had to die, but when the platform you're writing for dies, there's not a lot you can do.
... And if it doesn't work out of the box for me, I'll at least give them a month or two to come up with some bug fixes. ...
Sorry, you lost me right there. This is what beta test is for; to get those bugs out of the way before the paying customers hafta wait for fixes. Why on earth should I plunk down $50 for something that doesn't work as advertised? And if I do, you'd better believe I'll raise holy hell with customer support (and the managers if I don't get satisfaction). Games are expensive at first release; as a customer, I have a reasonable expectation of good quality 'ware for my money. If I get crap, they'll catch hell. Think of it as Skinnerian operant conditioning for vendors...
And by the way, I DO run a lot of older games; I buy'em in department stores in Germany for DM 20 (~$9.95) per copy (older games are widely marketed there on the cheap as bare CD-in-jewel-case, no fancy box, no printed manual; a neat idea we could use, too), and if they're crap, it's no big deal. So far, I've been quite satisfied. There being so little REAL innovation in games these days, I'm not missing out on anything. Every so often, I cruise the shelves at CompUSA, and all I see is bloodthirsty FPS variations on Quake. (Someone, PLEASE, come up with some new, playable game concepts...)
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
There's a better review here (IMHO, at least...)
---
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Get back at them by calling up their customer support and feed them lines like:
"My hard drive comes in 256 colors. Will Myst III work on my computer?"
"I'm trying to install but this little naked man keeps appearing on my screen yelling, 'DOOTY!DOOTY!'"
"I'm trying to watch the DVD release of your movie, but my player keeps ejecting the disk."
"ITS REAL DAMN IT!!! REAL!!! I CANT GET OUT!!! AAAAAAAAAAhhhh...."
"Will my characters from The Forgoten Realms be able to transfer over to Myst III?"
Someone you trust is one of us.
This is a real review dimwit. The review said, this game has more bugs than features, the software publisher knows it, and is moving at a glacial pace to fix the problems. That tells me all I need to know. (i.e. Don't buy it for my wife just because I know she'd probably like it, wait 3 more months for her Birthday. Maybe we'll have some patches by then...)
If you voted for Nader, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!
...is the link to a meaningful one. Your issues about the game seem to stem from the SafeDisc technology that they use. Giving criticism of this system is certainly meaningful to readers, but for a fair share of us, we *were* able to get past the installation and startup. A fair share of us use other systems that don't have drives assigned by letters in the alphabet. Rant all you want about the quality of reviews in other gaming publications. But I'll keep reading them; they are the ones providing a fair, comprehensive criticism of the game.
After reading the review I almost returned the game un-opened....Fortunatly I installed it on my Macintosh and from only about 5 minutes of play, I had to post.
On the macintosh it plays wonderfully. The 360 degree play is a welcome change as is the directional sound. I can't vouch for the puzzles or game play but it looks like they have take some great environment elements from the FPS games and included them.
So, while many points in the review are valid.... if the review had been done on a different platform we might have had a different result and that would not be entierly fair either.
Try explaining that to a marketing department!
When software is the only product you make, and you don't sell any sort of subscription (like Everquest) or service to go along with it, what you wind up with is high expense and no revenue. Human nature is such that most people won't pay a dime if they can get something for free instead. As much fun as the developers had making the game (a full-time job by the way), they'll be pissed when they don't get paychecks and can't pay their mortgages.
I think some people must have the impression that money would grow on trees if only it were open sourced.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Important moral of that story is that if you want truly independant reviews then:
It'll be hard financially, having to pay hard cash to purchase crappy stuff to blast in reviews. But readers should be willing to pay extra money to read good quality, unbiased reporting.
Which reminds me that my completely unoffical, unbiased, say-it-like-it-really-is-not-how-the-advertiser-th inks-it-is, fan site recently completely peed our subject material off and got us bad press. No worries. People visit our site not for candy coating, but cold hard facts.
Stay true to the facts, not the money.
It is if the program was supposed to do that.
>Is it worse than software that sends pr0n to your Mom, initializes your
>harddrive, and fries your CPU?
--
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
How the hell can you call that a review? Just because your PC is crap doesn't mean the game is crap.
I've read enough posts in here to know that there's some people who like the game and those who don't. Fine. That's understandable. But to say a game is flying piece of doggie-doo without even playing the ACTUAL game is ridiculous.
You sound just like a friend of mine. Every single piece of software & hardware he buys/installs he says is "crap" if it doesn't work within 15 minutes of installing it. Regardless of how long you spent trying to get the game working, you can't possibly call the gameplay crap when you didn't play the game. That's just your immature ignorance doing a little piss dance because you're mad about a bad piece of software. We all know the woes of software being published before it's stable and ready for release. Was that the case here? Probably. And I know how frustrating it can be wanting to try out something you've been waiting for, but don't assume your issues are the same as everyone elses.
I haven't played the game yet but I do intend on buying it as my wife loves the Myst games. Will my system run it? I hope so, and I will take heed to your install problems, but by no means will your little bitch session prevent me from buying a game.
Someone said if you want games to work on old hardware, play old games, was right. Don't expect brand spanking new games to work on old crappy computers.
----
No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
but, if you were to actually read it, he's also reviewing the purchase, and advising people that, in his belief, this is not something you want to go buy. That may not be "technically" what it means to review it, but, for the un-educated masses, it'll do.
Well michael i think your partly right in saying that most games get 8.5-9.5 rating but if you'll look deeper for example you'll see thats simply not true..
Take EGM for example.. sure the 10-15 featured games they review get 8.5-10 ratings(how games get a 10 theses days bother me). but they also rate tons of games in the 2.0 -7.0 range in the back of magazine!.. they're just not as prominate. I ready some where that over 70% of the Playstation games that got releases were rated at under 5.0 rating.. pretty sad....
So i guess i won't be playing myst anytime soon, since my cd drive is N: oh well
Take a look at most of the better review sites on the Internet, and you'd see that they actually do take game stability into account.
Gamespot.com actually has a "stability" section in their review summary. Avault writers frequently mention problems in their reviews (David Laprad's descriptions of some of the original Rune bugs are actually pretty funny.) Happypuppy sometimes makes a point of it. The old gamecenter reviews (which I miss) also did so (the Ultima Ascension review was pretty hilarious if I recall correctly). I could go on...
The thing is, they also review the game, even if they complain (which they have every right to) about the bugs.
// Jay Laney
Your review is based on the (important) fact that the game often doesn't work. GameSpot is also usually good about noting bugs and compatibility problems they encounter (here, for example). I'd guess that they didn't happen to run into the problems in Myst III, and their review was written before the game was released and the problems became known.
I also wonder if they might have had a pre-release copy of the game without Safedisc.
--
The above review sounds a lot like how I felt about Tribes 2.
It's a very frustrating feeling for those of us use to Linux-like stability.
--
M
As a writer and editor for many game industry publications...
As a writer and editor for game industry I would think the concept of a paragraph would be clearer.
This explains the state of gaming publications.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
I can't speak to the technical deficiencies of the game (I experience none of them), but I can say that, contrary to what michael is "reporting," the game DOES include a small booklet that contains instructions and installation help.
Wish I'd been smart enough to go to one of those stores when I bought Windows98. I could not get it to install, and CompUSA refuses returns.
I used to write reviews for a web-zine that I won't mention. I _never_ wrote a good review; of all the games, books and operating systems that were sent to me, they all sucked.
Then my editor quit his job and I got a new one. And he didn't like my negativity. So I quit.
Hmmph.
-Legion
-Legion
I agree, it's my job to write game reviews, and what was posted is not one. It's one of many, endless rants you see on the internet because a user's configuration didn't happen to work with a piece of software. It's about as original as "pull my finger".
The reviewer does have some points, and he should mention that the game has technical problems - and if severe and widespread enough they should factor into the final score to warn off potential buyers - but you can't judge the game solely on its technical shortcomings. Organize a boycott, petition on message boards, email tech support, call tech support - fine. But don't pass off your bitch and whine as a review.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Hey, are you sure you're allowed to write a bad review?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I was really looking forward to this game too, but boy was I disappointed. Myst and Riven had some really hard puzzles in them, providing me with weeks of play trying to figure them all out. Myst III gave me all of two afternoons. That's it. The eyecandy was great, but the puzzles were really just not up to the standard the first two games had set.
:-P
I wish it hadn't of worked when I installed it (only using my Yamaha CD-RW btw, my normal CD drive went on vacation trying to access the disk.) Then maybe I could've taken it back and gotten a refund.
i was a developer for riven. and maybe this is secret information, but i don't think so. and maybe cyan will be really mad at me for saying it (not like they already aren't, heh.) but...
myst iii wasn't written by cyan. and Robyn doesn't have anything to do with cyan anymore, at all.
so.
-k
No more, I'm afraid. I stopped buying it as the quality of the reviews had gone way down. They still slam bad games ruthlessly... Unless its from a major publishing house. Anything Microsoft puts out the door seems to automatically get at least a 90%.
They've also, as far as I can tell, replaced the staff with that from the much dreaded PC Accelerator after that mag went belly-up.
-RickHunter
This reminds me of an article I read maybe a year ago about the quality of PC games slipping. When it's so easy for a developer to release a patch or a fix, sometimes even before the game is released, what does this say about the developer? Personally, I'm someone who can't stand to make mistakes that have to go back and be corrected, especially if someone else points them out. Once I finish a project, I want it DONE. I'll test it several times, to make sure it works. And this isn't even for something i'm selling, it's a dinky php or perl script for use on my website. Does UbiSoft have any pride, for crying out loud? I mean, these are the guys who brought us Rayman and Rayman 2, come on, the French can do better than this.
In the console industry, while you don't have to worry about developing for multiple types of hardware, it's unthinkable to have to release an update to a game. It would cost enormous amounts of money. The developer does their own QA, and then the console manufacturer does further QA after that. With Microsoft's X-Box, and the PS2 now coming out with hard drives, I hope this won't lead to lower QA standards in the console gaming industry.
Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter
I've been playing Myst III for a week now (on and off-- I do have a job, after all). I've had no problems with it at all. None. Zero. I did download the update before even trying to run it, but still...
I've got a 1.2GHz Athlon, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, and a GeForce2 64MB DDR card. Myst3 runs beautifully. The graphics are smooth and fast, and the video is flawless.
Maybe you should be more surprised when you buy cheap hardware and it actually works. For that matter, would you give MS Minesweeper all 10/10 because it plays just fine on any hardware you can convince Windows 3.1 to run on?
Maybe this was supposed to be a troll. It's certainly not a review.
You should probably have called it more of a trouble report, or a news report or something. Calling it a "review" when you haven't even seen the game is stupid and a waste of your time and ours.
If we used this as a template to review most Linux software, we'd see the same scores.
Let me say that I had no problems with the game and think it's awesome. I bought the collectors edition which comes with much more tha is listed in the above review and has a manual in the CD case. The game installed like a dream and runs great. I also should add that I'm running on a Mac which greatly simplifies everything, double-click to install, double-click to run.
End of Line
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--
I like to watch.
Now, now, michael, tell us how you really feel. :)
Michael, I'm glad you thrashed the game, even if it was for different reasons. Slashdotters complain about degrading software quality a lot, but you're right--until more reviewers start speaking their mind, the crap-manufacturers will crank out more and more bunk.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
I'm running Windows 2000, with fairly new hardware, so my story may not be typical one, but I've got to say: what the fsck?!
I've had Myst III: Exile for a week now, and it runs like a charm. It's never locked up, the graphics are awesome, the end of one puzzle is an *extremely* long and cool video clip.
Throughout the whole game video and static images are merged even more seamlessly than they were in Riven, starting from the opening scene. You get sucked right into the game within minutes of popping the disc into your drive.
I may be an exception rather than the rule, but Myst III is fantastic.
this is a sig.
As much as this sounds like a shameless plug, this is why I tend to buy games rather then bug developers for them. (That, and the fact I'm such a wuss and I'm afraid they'll yell at me....) I don't mind getting a Beta, but 99% of the time I'll just buy the game myself rather than wait for a "review copy" to arrive in the mail.
Then again, we don't have that many reviews up compared to other folks.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I read more on this article to learn more about the gameplay, not to here some moron whine about how the game won't work for him. I don't mind if you include that kind of stuff, but if you never actually played the game, don't tout it as a review. How did this get published on slashdot anyway?
"There's a madness to my method." -mthed
Yeah I think you do have some good points. I think the game will really start to shine once the modders get a hold of it. I think a Counterstrike implimentation would really go a long way on the new Myst engine.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
I'm another review-writer (for a company which shall remain nameless, for fairness sake). To a degree, I consider a game to have two halves at release: The actual game (the content, the theoretical structure), and the presentation (the actual code an implementation of the structure). Now, sometimes the first can be great, and the second part lousy. This normally results in a game which has a great concept, but has either stability problems, or control problems or whatnot. These are the games which many people thought COULD have been good, except for some small part. However, when the latter is good, but the former is terrible, the game often has no redeeming qualities. Who wants to play a bad game, even if it's as stable as a rock?
I consider Myst 3 to be one of the former (at least according to the text). While the graphics which are to be shown to you are brilliant, and most of the puzzles which they have a great, it still has a host of stability problems. But to be fair, I still think the actual game deserves to be mentioned as part of your review.
Also, from the standpoint of a reviewer, I played the game, and saw no apparent bugs. How am I supposed to rate a stability problem when I don't even see it?
Save a life. Eat more cheese
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
It's more than a "cautionary note" to say "you are extremely unlikely to get this game to run"!!!
Consider cars. A typical car review says how well styled it is and how well (or badly) it corners, accelerates and brakes. If a reviewer was given a new car with a blown cylinder head, a leaky exhaust and no brakes, you reckon it'd get a good review? Uh-uh - they'd say "I've been given a dangerous and severely broken pile of shite, and the best I can do is advise ppl to stay the hell away from it".
Grab.
Diablo 2 and Age of Empires 2 used SafeDisc 1.SafeDisc2 which IIRC was first seen with Red Alert 2 is probably what Myst III uses.
The only problem with the game was that it went by way too fast. The puzzles were interesting, but Riven took much, much longer than this (18 hours, total).
Good thing it was a plastic glass and only water was inside.
As far as the game itself goes, the first time I tried to play it (this is on a Mac, remember), it worked pretty well. But after that the audio and/or video in the cinema scenes insisted on being choppy. So I installed all 2+ GB of it on the hard drive and had no further technical troubles.
It's definitely an improvement to be able to scan around the viewpoints with QTVR, over having what amounts to a pretty slide show. The cool part is how they manage to get video motion going while still doing a QTVR projection. Kudos to the wizards on the QuickTime team for bringing us this technology (which is probably not too useful outside of making Myst better. :-)
One important non-spoiler hint: when you get to where there are three display screens with focus controls, try clicking and dragging on the display screens. I was absolutely unable to grok that the display screens themselves were a control until reading a walkthrough which implied that there was some sort of directional control.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Oh damn. Now the company will have to pay $50 for a copy of a game if they want to review it. That is a drop in the bucket for most publications. As for the advertising revenue, while that is a legitimate concern, it is unlikely that the company will be able to talk competitors into not advertising, epecially if the competitors agree that the game sucked.
P.S. I've seen plenty of 2 points and lower reviews, often adjacent to other reviews (often higher) of games from the same company. I guess the solution is that a 0 rating is a little extreme, but a 1 or 2 is just going to wake up the development team.
After reading a review like this I can't wait to go out and buy the game myself and try it out! The Graphics sound intense, the gameplay sounds incredible and the way the game is shipped is simple yet powerful.
What do you mean, almost?
How can he claim to know enough about the game to give it a 0 in gameplay, graphics, and sound if he didn't even play it? I don't debate the value score, but trashing the entire game outright due to installation problems isn't a review, it's bitterly lashing out at the game company with a high profile /. story, which is just abusive, IMO.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
I have a Mac, and I don't know if that was the reason the game worked, but it did.
I beat the game after about a day and a half without sleep, and it was well worth it.
The game play is far superior than previous Mysts with 360-degree views. The story was good as well. The only thing about it was that I found the puzzles easier than before, they were more obvious than those in Riven, but were still challenging.
I also purchased the Collectors edition which includes a soundtrack cd, a making of cd the strategy guide, and a pewter squee (an animal in the game).
While not as challenging as Riven, the gameplay makes up for it, all in all I found it quite good.
Now as for the bitching about SafeDisc, yes, copy protection sucks. Not because it prevents every Tom, Dick, and Harry Pirate from copying the game, but because it prevents normal users from playing it all too often. And copy protection is really just copy delay - someone will hack the game eventually, release a patch, and then the game is everywhere.
As Bruce Schneier wrote in his latest Cryptogram, "Software can encapsulate Skill." The skilled cracker needs only crack the game once, and then the world has that game as soon as the crack is coded up into an executable.
A little over a year ago, I attended a Seattle area Sputnik meeting, which was (may still be, I haven't been in a while) a monthly meeting of Game Developers sharing techniques and information so that all games and developers could benefit. That day, the topic was Copy Protection, and the speakers were Bruce Dawson, Brian Brown (at the time, two of my coworkers at Cavedog Entertainment), and Scott Bilas (now at Gas Powered Games). They told interesting tales of how SafeDisc screwed up their games, made them run at 50% speed (or worse!), introduced compatibility issues, and delayed the development process while adding expense. Some developers switched to custom solutions, and some stuck it out and got Safedisc "working", more or less. The universal result: The games were still cracked. From several days to a month later, cracks appeared on the internet, with large audio files meant to drive the CD "out of range" compressed to MP3 format so the whole game could be neatly downloaded from a FTP site. In many cases, users were directed at game fan sites to grab the crack because it improved the performance of the game (by removing SafeDisc, of course).
The lesson was never spoken aloud, but it was pretty clear to me that day that the answer was to just forgo copy protection alltogether. Otherwise, you wind up pissing off your loyal, non-cracker customers, waste time and money, and you garner bad reviews. As has been said countless times before, digital data WILL be copied, no matter how hard you try to prevent it. So long as publishers release products of high enough quality at a reasonable enough price, the benefit to cracking the game will be outweighed to all but the crackers who take cracking as a personal challenge. Besides, there's nothing you can do about these guys anyway, except maybe get them a job putting their skills to the forces of Good instead of Evil.
You know what eventually let me play it? A cracked version someone on Bluebyte's Settlers III bulletin board mentioned is/was floating around in the Internet! Since then I haven't (and won't) be buying a single game from Bluebyte.
It wasn't all about copy-protection though; there were lots of bugs (it was hurried to xmas market half-done, probably thanks to PHBs), and even though every week they had Yet Another Patch, those didn't fix the most obvious (copy protection) problems until perhaps 6 months after the release.
I thought german (game) companies were mostly infatuated with cd copy protections (as well as german media conglomerates). I hate to see the trend continue with US companies. On the plus side, I have tried to support linux-game companies (CivCTP was the first game, and even thought it had its bugs, I'm still very happy with it), and haven't had a single pirated linux-game ever (and don't plan to). Too bad they've concentrated too much on boring 1st person 3d shoot-em-ups, but I guess that's where money is (alas).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
It's of course important to let the company know about the problems; the problem is, other customers also need to know that products available have problems. And chances aren't good that companies won't report that... So where are you going to get your information? Buying a game and learning of problems? Think about buying some non-software thing, and learning of big problems (your car's tires exploding, say...). Would you think people writing about problems are just whiners ("why not concentrate on how nice it's to actually drive the gas-guzzling Ford Explorer instead of whining about probs with rolling over when tires fail?")
Does anyone know if there are "game consumer report" websites somewhere? I sure would like to first know which games are (potentially) unusable, and only then consider the actual merits of the game.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Still, it used to be (AFAIR) that games were less likely to have obvious defects (crashes, not installing etc) than larger applications... Games did not have patches (and versioning was... um... different than with applications that evolved up to version 8, while still being much the same application; game version II was usual a very different game, and if it wasn't was considered a rip-off)
Games have evolved more complex (like applications), and to a degree problems are result of this (as well as hardware variations). Even so, that's not a good reason to accept this trend.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
And your post pinpoints why companies get away with that. People who accept this kind of products make sure that's what they'll be getting. Being part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. I personally try to do few things I can to not support 'release-often-release-buggy' software cycle (both as a developer and as a consumer)
Finally, my experience from both game and application industry tells me that it is perfectly possible to produce high-quality games and applications. It's "only" a matter of time and money, and whether company puts more weight on short- or long-term success. My previous employer did release a buggy version of the flagship product, only to find out that for the forthcoming version they can't afford to do the same. Competitor (even thought its still the underdog) would eat them alive, if they release as buggy a version as last time. For game companies it used to be that they only got one shot per game. Rules seem to be changing for worse (or perhaps they just have change like you claim, wish I didn't care)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
And since when has it been acceptable to sell games that are bug-ridden before patches? That's what QA is for, and for the longest time computer games actually were much more bug-free than other applications (or perhaps that's just because I used to play much more years ago, not so much lately).
And if it's "the same with brand-spanking-new" games like you suggest, why on earth are game companies producing such crap instead of creating games they know they can actually make work?!?! That has been possible for years you know, so why the sudden interest in producing bug-ridden customer-angering pieces of dung?
I don't buy your argument any more than I'll be buying the game reviewed. And I don't think I'm unreasonable if I indeed judge the game by its "first version". In my book versions for games are "Ultima I", "Ultima 2"; not "Ultima 1.001", "Ultima1.001b". If it's broken when I get it, it's done, over with.
Of course that would be a useful attitude with application software too. Missing features is ok; having (significant) defects is not.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Perhaps it's because I pre-ordered the collector's edition (which came with the game, a "making-of" CD, a soundtrack CD (to which I am at this very moment listening), the Prima hint guide book, and a cute pewter statuette of a Squee. Perhaps it's because I have a PC with a decent graphics card, sound card and processor, and didn't have any trouble in the least running the game.
Regardless, Exile is an awesome game. The soundtrack is fantastic, the graphics are fantastic, the puzzles are entertaining (and consistently make you feel like you are inside the mechanism of the puzzle rather than just looking at it). I was worried that Presto would not have the touch that Cyan did in creating games within the world of Myst, but they've done a wonderful job of remaining true to the series.
I give Exile two thumbs up.
--John
Explanation: Three weeks ago, my girlfriend purchased Myst III: Exile, as her and her mother are HUGE fans of the series. They have an Intel graphics card, and so it wouldn't work. They called me, I diagnosed the problem, and we looked for a patch. The folks at UbiSoft encouraged users not to return the software because a patch would be ready next week.
Well, that deadline came and went, and came again and went, and came once more and went. So now they have this useless piece of plastic that they don't quite know what to do with.
I talked to them about this yesterday and they want to return the game. Had they bought it from Electronics Boutique like I encouraged, this MIGHT have been no problem. But, no, they bought it from Best Buy, who refuse to accept returns on software; you can only exchange open CD software within one week of purchasing it for the EXACT SAME SOFTWARE.
Now, the killers:
1. Our local software stores have ALL pulled M3:E from their shelves. I went to buy a copy for myself, I played it fine on my system and it's pretty nice, but it's nowhere to be found. All the stores (including Best Buy) pulled it.
2. The license agreement states: "If you are the original installer of the software you may promptly return the software (including printed materials) with proof of purchase to the place where it was purchased for a full refund of the amount paid."
This leads me to believe that a) legally Best Buy is required to accept a return within whatever time period is defined by the adverb "promptly;" and b) that the stores are doing a sort of unofficial recall on the software.
Now if I go with her to Best Buy tomorrow, you and I all know damn well that Best Buy will NOT accept the return. The question is, what can we do? Are my girlfriend and her mum stuck with 4 $50 (they pre-ordered the Collectors Edition, no less) coasters, a music CD, and a Making-of the Game You Can't Play Movie CD? Or can I go into Best Buy, flash them the EULA, and tell them to take their software back?
IANAFLA (I am not asking for legal advice) but I need some idea of what to do here. (Expect me to post this to Ask Slashdot if there aren't enough/any answers generated =))
Thanks much,
-Forager
student of animation and the fine arts
OTOH, I hate it when a reviewer gets so caught up in technical problems running it, that you can't see what the game will be like once (if) you get it up and running. For example, Ultima IX. My current system can run it, no problem. Have I ever seen a review of the actual gameplay? No. Was it worth buying when it came out? No. But now I'm curious. And of course reviewers are loath to do a "second chance review" after all the patches, and for a very good reason-- they don't want to encourage these releases of beta products. Finish it, dammit, and then release it. But the issue remains-- if you're releasing a review so I can inform myself about a game, make sure you talk a bit about the gameplay.
Thanks to the 32-bit color requirement, voodoo2 and 3 users are also out of luck as far as hardware acceleration. The game looks like utter crap in software mode, too. I think Journeyman Project 3 had better graphics than Myst III in software mode, and that was made in '98, if I recall correctly, with a similar "look-around" game model.
I think that's what we want to know.
---
This
I played it on my PowerBook G3/400 and it's pathetic little video chip. Played great, none of the problems listed here. Guess it's a Windoes thing.
--- http://homepage.mac.com/gregjsmith
Seriously, I almost never read just the article and assume that the little Slashdot writeup is correct. Assuming I have time, I read the comments. Generally speaking, if Slashdot makes a goof, the high-ranking comments will explain it. Something most industry 'zines can't do, since it's hard to add comments on dead trees in realtime.
So while there may be more people reading Slashdot, most are intelligent enough to think for themselves and know enough to question what they read. I don't believe everything I read on Slashdot, and I try and check out the facts as best I can. It's a skill that most "nerds" have, being able to recognize poor arguments and arguments that are lacking in facts. Any college student had better be able to structure an argument based on facts, and be able to recognize when an argument doesn't have the facts to back it up.
(For example, my whole argument here doesn't have any facts to back it up, hehe... so you should think for yourself in this case - does your experience match what I'm suggesting? Can you think of times when Slashdot posted wrong information? Can you think of times when the comments have corrected information in the article, and the article has later been updated based on comments?)
The bottom line is that most people who read Slashdot have learned not to blindly accept everything written on the site. For that respect, this review is "ok" - it's obviously detailing only Michael's experience, and it tells me that should I ever look into getting Myst III I'll need to be careful to ensure that my system will run the game - I got burned in the same way with Black & White, it wouldn't run on my machine without several patches to Win2K. And B&W's protection scheme also effects my ability to play - it takes literally around two minutes to decide the CD is valid on my machine.
So Michael's article, which should obviously be mostly Michael blowing off steam, is acceptable. This wouldn't be an acceptable print article, but in the context of Slashdot, where it's being used to promote discussion, it's fine.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
This is sorta like the rules in tipping bad service (i.e., at a restaurant): If you stiff the service, you MIGHT have just forgotten the tip. If you leave a penny, you MIGHT have dropped the penny and forgotten the tip. If you leave multiple coins, totalling LESS than 10 cents, the point is taken.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
As far as a GAME review is concerned, I'm finding Exile to be as beautiful and riviting (if not more) than the previous two Mysts. The puzzles are challenging, the video effects are gorgeous, and the plot meets Myst expectations.
It's unfortunate that Ubi Soft didn't wait a month or two the fix the install bugs, but I would encourage anyone dedicated to playing Myst III to first visit the well-updated web site FAQ, and buy the game pre-warned. (Hey, I notice it went down in price too!)
So, here I was thinking - yay a review. Ah well. I'll supply one then:
:-), but it doesn't get in the way too much. The idea is that there is a navigation mode and a click/action mode, but using the numeric keypad, I seem to swap between the two fairly simply.
I just happened to walk past a copy of Myst III on the shelf, only found out it had been released the week before, never even wondered how much it was going to cost (AUS$84.95), figured that they were lying when they didn't mention NT on the box.
I'm running Myst III on NT4. It's not a supported operating system, my mouse is broken, but using the numeric keypad I have been having a ball.
So what is it like then?
My game came in a big box, with a manual, installation guide, though the box was too big for the CD case, but you get that.
I inserted the CD, fired up the installer, and had no problems.
The game sports full 360 degree views, and I must say that my 17" monitor is too small, I get queasy if I spin around too fast, but the sound is directional, high quality and worth pumping up the volume for.
The manual talks about modes (I hate modal software
Game save shows you a screen shot of where you were when you saved, and I suppose my only comment would be that renaming a saved game would be nice. It wasn't obvious that you could change the whole name until I accidentally deleted too much text - the save stuff uses Myst characters, rather than a standard save dialog.
The game itself is for me an excellent example of the development stages of technology, Myst, Riven and Myst III show a definite progression of excellence in development.
For my money, well worth it.
|>>?
FWIW, it has been working fine thus far on my G4/400 (Sawtooth). I have 256 MB RAM and the original ATI Rage128 Pro in the AGP slot. Though, it looks like we G4 users may be alone, because my buddy with a beige G3 (466 MHz G3 upgrade card + ATI Radeon PCI) has had nothing but trouble.
I too agree that it's not as grabbing at the original Myst, but then I guess I had some pretty high expectations. Still, I think it's an enjoyable worthwhile game, but:
Be sure to read the messageboards first to see if it'll work on your machine / gfx card combo!!
I"ve not looked at PC Gamer for many a moon but it used to review only final shipping unpatched product and it was *very* honest. As a result when I still paid attention to such things the reviews tended to be about a month or two behind everyone else but you could be sure it was dead on accurate.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Lets continue on the U9 example.
Lets not attack the developers, but the publisher. This is one of the reasons Richard Gariott left origin. EA forced them to release a product that obviously wasn't ready. Richard knew it, Richard explained it to the bigwigs at EA, EA wanted it released, so they had to release it. EA should be chastized, but not Origin.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What the gaming industry needs is more reviews like the above.
You aren't reviewing the game, your reviewing the bad status of the game. You didn't get it to work, so its a bad game?
No, the game needs more work and patches, which sucks, but the game still could be wonderful. I will use Ultima9 as an example. When it was released, it blew and was incomplete, but after the last patch was installed, the game was outstanding.
In the end, lets not criticize the game, lets find out why it is bad and criticize that (was the publisher forcing the developer to release before it was ready? Did the developer fail to use a good QA strategy?). The developer might not be the reason the game failed, so quit trying to start a crusade before you know the enemy.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It seems to me that the art to writing reviews is to find the good stuff to say. If the game (or movie, or book, etc.) is so bad that the good stuff you find is highly contrived then most intelligent people will take your point and not waste their money. As for the unintelligent people, well, "A fool and his money..."
For example, the original review complained that the CD's were only useful as coasters. Instead, he could have praised their good qualities.
Instead of complaining about the software protection...
Don't rag on the poor developers, give credit where credit is due.
Finally, and seriously, don't give a any product a "zero". Most readers will think you are holding a grudge and won't take you seriously. Is it worse than software that sends pr0n to your Mom, initializes your harddrive, and fries your CPU? No? It's better than a zero. Give it a "4 out of 10" and no one's going to buy it anyway (unless they have too much free time and way too much cash.)
Just my two cents... If I knew what I was talking about I'd be a highly-paid game reviewer ;)
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I dunno, seems like CmdrTaco has frequenly mentioned playing games on his windows partitions, Hemos too, and complaining that more games aren't available for linux. Fair enough, no?
/. shows remarkable restraint by *not* linking to them and sticking with what even lowly dialup users can see.
But "multimedia clips that were related to submissions" is something else -- maybe they didn't want those becuase they are unuseable for most people? (OS aside -- most people are on dialup.) They don't link to a lot of MPEG clips either, no matter how universal they are, right?
Reviewing games seems more like reviewing books and not parallel to "multimedia clips." I hate people sending attachments without asking, and I'd hate to have stories here link to a lot of multimedia files that would take forever to download. Maybe in a separate section ("Slashdot for High bandwidth"?) that would be good, but considering all the various parody songs, flash files etc that spring up, I think
Games for the most part get purchased like books do, and bandwidth / usability-over-the-net is not such a limiting factor. Seems OK to me.
(and I don't play games much either, but I like to see them reviewed here;))
simon
"Hey Carlito, r'membah me? Benny Blanco from the Bronx!"
OK, I have Myst III. It runs FINE on my computer, and just as well on the other two computers in my house. With that aside, let me be so kind as to point out some major faults in this "review"...
"No instruction manual, no installation guide, nothing to get you into the spirit of Myst, no handy journal to write down your thoughts, just a CD case rattling around inside a box that is about 10 times larger, by volume, than necessary to hold the case."
OK, first off... if this guy had bothered to actually OPEN the CD case, he would have found a manual booklet inside the case. Secondly, I don't recall Riven coming with a journal, but I don't think anyone who reviewed Riven knocked it for not having a journal... notebooks worked fine for me. And, frankly, most games these days only ship a little CD in a big box (if you're lucky you get a little manual too! Wow!). It's called marketing, get used to it.
As for the forums at Rivenguild (of which I am a member, by the way), I've seen plenty of posts attacking Myst III and calling it crap, but there are also a substantial number of GOOD posts about Myst III. Unfortunately, our reviewer failed to even look at these. Yes, there are unavoidable tech problems with the game, and I realize some people can't run the game at all. Honestly though, if you can't RUN the game, why bother REVIEWING the game since you have NO idea what sort of game it is when it WORKS!
I've seen a few comments in here about contacting Cyan about this. Don't. It's not something they can do anything about. Don't even email or snail mail them about giving the series to Presto and attacking them because the game doesn't work. Once again, they can't do anything about it. If you want to contact someone about TECH issues, try getting a hold of UbiSoft. Presto, in my opinion, did an excelent job with the game, it was UbiSoft who bungled the QA in an effort to keep the game on schedule after slipping the release date several times. Maybe (just maybe!) the patch is late coming out because they actually want to get it right and fix as many problems as possible! Wow, what a concept!
Oh, here's something else. Looking at the Important Stuff regarding replies, it says "Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated." OK, so I'm just asking, would this review have been moderated down as inflamatory and offensive if it were a reply? I'm fairly sure this reply to the "review" will be, even though I went no further than the reviewer in terms of hostility.
Shorah, Alahmnat
You can acutally BUY games? Well I'll be...
Maybe it was because his was pre-release, but when I opened the CD case on my copy, two things fell out: disk 2 and an installation guide. Besides, what's to know about installing? Put the CD in, if autorun works, click "install". If not, go to the CD drive in Explorer and select "Autoplay".
That said, he raised a lot of good points about hardware problems with the game, and I'd like to applaud him for being so harsh about it, even though I haven't had any problems myself.
Actually, I've had a complete lack of problems solving the game, too. The original Zork trilogy presented more of a challenge. Zork had a much better story-line, too.
I can remember one game that had a list of 'cons' a mile long and the 'pros' section said "it came in a nice glossy box."
My favorite was:
Pro: The uninstaller works correctly.
Con: When smashed into pieces, the CD has many sharp edges.
The web is a good place to get the pre-first-glance-my-brother-told-me-about-it type of reviews that keep the fanboys going. I feel that magazines, perhaps because of the fact that they are "real" should take a little more time and get things right. Or maybe I'm just crazy.
My life is dedicated hosting
Even with the bugs, I'm sure those that DO have systems who can play it wouldn't mind hearing at least a single sentence on the gameplay, which this "review" didn't include, not that I noticed. It was a rant that could easily have been written without even touching the actual games. And the suggestion that game publications must give out lots of good reviews to continue getting games is utter rubbish. That's the risk publishers take, and if you give a game a bad review they'll still send you more games because you may well give the next one a good review, something that all publishers need for their games. In fact, I've worked as a full time games reviewer (and in fact still am one) and have had first hand experience of this before. I gave two games from the same publisher bad scores and then a rather good one to the third one they sent me. Anyway, that's my slightly grumpy 2c.
I wonder how great this review is going to affect sales. I think by at least 5-10% because of /dotters.. What do you guys think?
http://dtum.livejournal.com
Michael, we don't want to hear about your installation problems. I'm sorry if it wouldn't install for you, I really am. But when will you stop wasting our time and realise that we don't care. If you're going to review something, find a way. I want a real review, not some bloke making a point.
- Ando
You are the weakest link, goodbye.
just a CD case rattling around inside a box that is about 10 times larger, by volume, than necessary to hold the case.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri from Loki comes in a cool DVD-style case. The packaging is the case. Even though money is still spent on designing the cover, it wasn't lost on crappy cardboard, wasted inserts, and other such stuff.
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
But is it worse than "Airport Tycoon"? At least the one place I saw it reviewed on-line did give it a sucky review, though it deserved ten times worse (they gave it 3/10, I'd give it 0/10). Airport Tycoon is the only software I've ever purchased and installed, that I uninstalled and totally *threw away* within four hours of installing it.
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
It makes the point that the gaming press covers big-title games like the non-existent Duke Nukem Forever over and over while thousands of smaller titles go ignored.
If the game review media broadened their scope a bit, or narrowed it to exclude vaporware, we the gaming public would be a lot better off. Too bad this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
I do have a concrete suggestion for all game review mags, however, to help them maintain some kind of journalistic ethics. Simply add to all reviews, next to the number of stars or the numerical rating, a second rating, supplied by the financial officer, as to how important that publisher's advertising is to the gaming magazine. I suggest a simple three point system:
- 1 = this publisher's advertising buys are very important to us, we must do everything in our power not to piss them off
- 2 = this publisher's advertising buys are below average for our mag, we can call things a bit more as we see them
- 3 = this publisher's advertising buys are not important to us or are nonexistent, what follows is our true opinion
I recommend the above referenced series of articles at the Adrenaline Vault to everyone.- 360 degree freedom of view, ala QuicktimeVR, that also have motion video, so you can watch a character move and speak while rotating the view.
- spacial sound (lovely!)
- engaging puzzles, just like the first two in the series
The puzzles aren't quite as enchanting as the first two, but it may be because I know more what to expect.Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Sorry, but I can't stand people who buy the very, very latest game on the market right when it hits the shelves and then complain that it won't run on their four year old computer and/or that it requires numerous bugfixes.
This has happened with numerous great games -- two recent examples are Ultima 9 and Black and White. These are great games but there are always that group of people who were hoping to get something (the newest gaming experience available) for nothing (no investment in matching hardware). If Myst III: Exile is intending to push the limits on realism using 3D hardware (which is what it's been advertised as from the beginning), why would you assume that your old i740 card will run it? You already know exactly what your hardware can do. Don't expect miracles.
This review is just whining. I'm sorry, but I want games that push the envelope. Period. And if it doesn't work out of the box for me, I'll at least give them a month or two to come up with some bug fixes. If you want "safe" games (i.e. that will support all of your old hardware, will be very stable out of the box, etc...) then run old games, just like using the 2.2 kernel instead of the newer 2.4 kernel. Yes the 2.4 kernel is still a little unstable in some cases, but some of us want the features. It would be nonsense to say "2.4 kernel: I give it 0/10 as a piece of software. It's unstable crap."
In my opinion, it's the same with brand-spanking-new (i.e. less than a month old!) games which are as complex as today's games are and are trying to do new things. It would be much easier to chuck out yet-another-FPS based on this-or-that Quake engine and make it stable, but I wouldn't be nearly as interested in it.
If you don't like it, play King's Quest. That's still fun and it'll run on your 386.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There's more.
I don't know what weird games you've been installing, but SimCity 3k, Quake III, and HeavyGear 2 all installed fine for me. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a single game that I've ever needed more than one library at most, and that library is usually SDL, so I only have to install it once.
now where can I get an iso of this baby?
Graphics: 9/10
The cardboard box had excellent screen shots of the game, and the UPC label had flawless printing: when I bought the game, the price came up immediately and accurately! The M3 error message dialogue boxes were flawlessly rendered and they even used my custom color settings. Also, as is not the case with most applications, my default settings of large fonts did not cause the dialogue box's error messages to be unreadable.
Sound 1/10
The windows "beep" was very entertaining to hear with each crash of M3.exe. I even customized it so that I could hear something different each time I played!
Gameplay 1/10
Sadly, the game crashed quite frequently. However, clicking the "OK" button in the error messages was fast and responsive. Unfortunately, a known bug prevented me from reading the end credits (best part of it). But UBISOFT said, "Don't worry! It'll be fixed in the upcoming patch! But dont' worry, you're not missing anything." But I was. I wanted the name of every developer who let this crappy product get released so I could call him and express to him my feelings regarding this "game."
Value 1/10
Perhaps this game should have been shipped on CD-RW discs so that I could have actually used them. However, the CD's get points for meeting ISO9660's strict requirements, and the upgrade patch file exe I downloaded was virus free.
Volume 10/10
I'm referring to the volume of the cardboard box. The box was ten times larger than necessary. This is certainly a good value. Not only did I get a big box, it came chock full of free air. Now I won't have to go to my local gas station for its free air for a long time.
Got friends?
Highly anticipated game, short technically and in play mechanics. Fortunately, errors of this magnitude hardly ever slip thru the cracks, but some things (graphics glitches, manufacturing problems, etc.) are present in so many of these products you wonder if Stevie Wonder isn't head of QA.
Not that I care all that much either. I'd rather chew on a razor blade then sit through Myst 3, but I'm sure that it's a huge disappointment to the people who were looking forward to it.
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
I thought for sure that the discussion was going to be the merits of the game itself and not the hardware compatibility. I didn't know about the problems with the game. We all take a chance even after reading the requirements on the box. I, for one, took a big chance because the box said Windows 95/98/Me and I have Windows 2000. But it worked out for me and I was extreemly pleased with the quality of the game and performance. I only had a little problem with the actual story, being one of a bad science fiction movie. But, hey, even really bad sci-fi is good :) Although I was annoyed at the ranting attitude, I do appreciate hearing about the techincal problems with the game.
Some states do in fact have what are called "Lemon Laws", saying that companies can not knowingly sell products that do not work. While I had no problems with Myst III, and I didn't read the bugs section of the readme, if they say they know of these errors and unsupported hardware and yet still market it as being compatable with said hardware, that is illegal in any state that has lemon laws, because they know what they're selling wont work.
Check with your local government office to see if your state has such laws. I know for a fact that Pennsylvania (where I live) has such laws.
Is it as bad as Hologram Time Traveller?
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Somehow, I imagine that they either get royalties from the sales of Myst III or have some contract against slandering it (though in this case, it wouldn't be slander as it's true). Though I bet the Millers are as rich as eskimo kings at this point, they probably will still tend to their financial interests and let the users battle it out on this one. Then again, perhaps they have souls? In my experience, ethics are rarely found in any sort of business, so who knows.
BUUUUUTTTT, as for the game play, I'm sadly disappointed. It seems more linear than Riven or Myst and the puzzles are easier. I'm over 1/4 of the way done with it and the best word I can use to describe it is: ok.
-- adam a 62 69 74 65 20 6D 65
Well, my copy of Myst III, which I purchased for my Mother, installed just fine. It runs perfectly on her old machine. It runs fine on all 4 different machines I've tested it on at home. These machines ranged from an old Pent Pro machine with an overdrive proc in it running ME, to a dual-proc machine running win2000. The software runs flawlessly on all of them - including the 2000 machines, which are specifically NOT guaranteed to work. I also recieved a manual with my copy of Myst III. That's the little book with the pages in it with words on them - it was in the CD case. It has the story-type info in it as well as the instructions for installation and play. The game itself provides an amazingly intuitive introduction into the game world, a tradition among the Myst series. After an introductory video sequence, you find yourself staring out over a vista. Someone is speaking to you, apparently, from behind. You realize suddenly that the movie is over - you're in control. The first time I turned and saw the integrated FMV of another person, I must admit I was impressed. I had no intention of playing this game myself, but after a few moments I realized I would be playing it for sure.
So imagine if you're me, and you're reviewing this game. You've tested it on 4 different machines with different OS's and hardware, and had zero problems. Are you going to give it a bad review based on that experience? I hardly believe you would give it a second thought, and would actually review the game content.
Faulting someone for using safedisc is hardly something related to the review of a game. It's a bad mark on the company, certainly. People out there who have problems with safedisc games already know this. I had no problems with safedisc on my machines, however, I checked the web (http://www.gamecopyworld.com) and easily found a safedisc bypass for this game.
-nad
Sometimes I think Daikatana would have been a better game if they actually HAD shipped coasters instead of the CD.
Similar examples of low quality software are Nero (failed to burn a single good CD), and Visio 2000 (new computers seem to seg fault beginning with installation). Quicken QuickTax 2000 wouldn't update unless you installed the full-version (extensive debugging required before I could file my taxes online). I've seen at least four examples of software that ignore installation options (like not installing desktop icons, not checking for updates on the internet, etc.)
Thank goodness I generally don't pay for this crap.
at least the author has supported and improved the game since its release. How many other companies can you say that about (or authors)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"I'm now afraid to uninstall the game, since many people have reported the complete destruction of their Windows system upon uninstallation of Myst III. "
:-) and I liked the first Myst
BWAHAHAHAHAHHA and they ask me why StarCraft: Brood War (a very excellent game) was the last wd0$ game I ever bought. At least with Loki porting games 1.) the QA doesnt suck (in fact, it's excellent), 2.) if a bug does slip through QA it cant rape your opsys, 3.) if the game doesnt work it's probably your hardware setup, not vice-versa and 4.) all this SafeDisk silliness is irrelevant.
Geez - reviews like this are just too gratifying
Go Loki!
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Presumably the multitude of showstopping bugs are a smokescreen to prevent players getting to the creatively bankrupt button-puzzles that constitute the 'gameplay'. Sigh... some problems no amount of patches can fix.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
Well, I don't know what game the reviewer was writing about... but the Myst III game that I own is fantastic. I have a Mac and the game installed and ran flawlessly, although that may be a platform specific feature... hehe. The 360 panorma views are fantastic. About the only thing that was strange about the installation was that I had to manually copy information from my CD-ROMs to the hard drive. All in all, this is quite worth the money and I don't see why someone who liked either of the previous two games hsould not own it.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
> Nor could you play the game in hardware > mode if your card doesn't support 32-bit color, > even though the game box > prominently proclaims support for 16-bit. Their mistake is that they shouldn't claim to support such an antique piece of hardware. I'm sure their recommended system is quite different from their supported system. Sounds like you need to upgrade. > Most crippling of all, if you have > an Intel, S3 or SiS video card or video chipset, > your game won't run at all > (similar problems have also been reported with > several other video chipsets, > such as ATI Rage cards). Once again, you seriously need to upgrade your system. Intel has no business whatsoever making video chips. Both S3 and SiS are dinosaurs, many of the companies that supported them either went out of business or moved on to something else. I can't speak for ATI Rage, since I haven't had any firsthand experience with it. I've noticed that many people with more decent hardware have already responded and submitted reviews. Good luck in getting the next game to work on your system, but please refrain from posting further reviews like this one until you've actually spent some money on your machine. And to those of you who are bickering about the inability to return the item to the store, here's a bit of scoop on that. Retailers regard video games in particular as disposable merchandise. Compared to that $300 copy of Windows or that $1500 copy of Adobe Illustrator, your $50 game purchase isn't worth the hassle. Keep it up and they will discontinue distribution of PC video games completely. That's why the console market is so much more successful (and will always be more successful) than the PC market. You can guarantee quality against a stable platform without the added hassle of having to worry about differences in hardware, drivers, or shoddy operating systems. I've adopted a strategy of never buying PC video games unless I know of at least one other person who has gotten the game to run on a similar system, or unless I'm willing to suck a $50 loss to take the risk whether it will run on my machine or not. Hopefully, that situation will improve (part of my job is in trying to improve this very thing). Until then, try not to blame the retailer, try not to blame the studio, try not to blame the publisher, and try to become as informed a consumer as possible before spending that $50 on an impulse purchase. --Ear Phantom
I wouldn't be so annoyed if, in the summary you had written "So I pre-ordered Myst 3 and I couldn't install it and these are the difficulties I had..."
For others that think this was a helpful review, I've got some similar contributions:
- I had trouble with this game. It wouldn't run because, oops, I boot Linux on my machine(s).
- The ordering process for this game was intensely difficult. I'm using lynx on a souped up 286 with no SSL and, for some reason, I can't connect to any e-commerce sites that will give me free shipping.
- Once I finally got this game and installed it (and Windows), my machine started locking up and giving me a blue screen with some cryptic codes at least once a week. Has anyone else had this problem?
- The CDs this game comes with aren't nearly as cool as those original black playstation CDs. I think it's of cardinal importance that people are aware, as far as it's physical presentation, this game is aesthetically nonsatisfying.
- I think bugs in code are bad.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe issues like those presented in the above article are important, but it's irritating finding a bug list where one expects a review of the product. The replies section is where bad parodies should go.I thought this was a great review.
As an aside, I don't play games as much as I used to, partially because of games being released like this. When I do buy games, I only purchase from EB now because it is the only store in Canada that I have found which will allow you to return opened games, no questions asked, within 10 days. They rock.
I received the Collector's Edition for my birthday. It has the 4 game disks, the soundtrack, a strategy guide and a pewter "squee" (alien mouse).
The game plays great. The only problem I has was that I could not use the Hardware video rendering. I had to use the software option. Whenever I tried to use the hardware option, the screen would flicker black and then put me on my desktop.
It's a great game and such an improvement from the original Myst. You can pan around and up and down so you don't miss any detail.
-Monipenny
Agreed entirely.
When I said Slashdot I meant the whole of Slashdot, reviews and comments. Especially comments (except the ones that start with yo mama or goat references).
I stopped fussing a while back about software not installing correcly on my Compaq Presario(obviously).
"Piter, too, is dead."
Former Freelance wrote :
<quote>
But since this guy paid for the game, and it's only Slashdot, this is "acceptable" in this case.
</quote>
Realizing that Slashdot is more reverently followed in technical matters than all corporate zines together, the statement must have been highly satirical
"Piter, too, is dead."
Of course Exile comes with installation and gameplay instructions. They're exactly the same sort of instructions as came with Riven and Myst.
It's a cool game too.
I was at Electronics Boutique first thing in the morning waiting to get my Collector's Edition MYST III. I loaded the game onto my Macintosh G4 and it performed flawlessly. No glitches, no stutters, just smooth as silk gameplay. Overall I found the game interesting, enjoyable and better than Riven or MYST.
Y'know what? While we're at it, I have like tried for two days to get Tribes2 back up and running, and guess what? THEY'VE BEEN A TINKERIN' WITH IT SO DAMN MUCH, they destroyed the auto-update and moved the gaming server information on the same day. Wow. I have never seen such a colossal f*up like that ever. NOT ONLY CAN I NOT GET INTO THE GAME, MY COMPUTER WON'T BE ABLE TO FIND THE SERVERS WHEN THEY GET THERE. So Now that, my friends, is genius at work. An online game that neither is a game now, nor online. The funniest part? I use the most common parts to my box, so that these f*ups don't affect me. Oh, and I have Exile, and its great... I just happen to be going through the same things with Tribes2.
Yes, linux software is at times difficult to install. However I think it's fairly safe to say that if you're using linux in any sort of real sense, especially a non RH distribution, you probably have more basic computer knowledge than your average win32 user. Given this fact, what is acceptable for a linux install is not acceptable for a windows install where everything is at least technically supposed to work out of the box. It doesn't, but we're not here to talk about that. Safedisc is one of the most annoying pieces of software I've ever seen, at best it makes starting up the game take forever. At worst as stated here it stops people from even using the software. It's always done this, and it's not likely to ever change. Not sure why software distributers still use the thing, but that's their lookout. Incorrect system requirements on boxes are old hat by now they nearly always happen. I can't say this one really upsets me since I don't really like voodoo cards in the first place and to the best of my knowledge voodoo cards are the only semi-up to date cards which don't offer 32 bit support. I think review valuable though it is, is admitedly somewhat incomplete, ease of installation is an important part of any review, admitedly I didn't particularly like the first Myst, never bought the second and don't plan on touching this one with a 10 foot pole, but that's only my opinion, others might like the thing. Of course if they can't install it it's not going to do anyone much good.
I have a cow orker who was telling me last Thursday how he spent his entire weekend getting through this game.
Not one mention of technical glitches.
Of course, he and I spend our days spitting out device drivers and modding RTOS internals for multi-protocol wireless commo systems (a driver a day, is all we ask), so what we call a "glitch" you might knife yourself over.
He did say it was as relatively engrossing as the original Myst, and way more affecting than Riven (Myst 2; the game I didn't spend more than ten minutes on before I got bored with the tan, tan, tan, tan, tan).
--Blair
Yeah, it's crummy that the QA fell short for this game when it came to hardware configurations. I've got two Windows boxes. The one with the Intel graphics card of course can't play the game, but it worked quite nicely on the other. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones.
I've finished the game already, and had a grand time playing it. Though I've never played Myst through, I absolutely loved Riven. The stunning graphics and tasteful atmospheric soundtrack were totally immersive, and the puzzles were hard. Full frontal-lobe engagement. I've never enjoyed a game as much.
I have to say that Exile does not quite live up to its predecessor. The graphics are equally stunning, but not any more so than Riven. (There are a couple of places where they look a little sloppy, but they're few and far between... and then Riven had some of those as well.) The 360-degree pivotal viewpoint is a marked improvement over Riven's stills, though. The designers/artists should be commended for their ability to make every viewpoint -- from every angle -- as picturesque.
But the main thing I found lacking in Exile, compared to Riven, was depth and difficulty of the puzzles. I'm a masochist for puzzles, and Riven was a more challenging game. I basically whipped through Exile in about 25-30 hours of play-time (savouring every step, of course). I wouldn't say it's super-easy... just easier than Riven.
As for the soundtrack, it's in the same vein as those of Myst and Riven. It adds to the atmosphere of the game without being at all distracting. It's well done, again, and is a little more varied than Riven's. (There's actually a drum-track or two, this time.)
Value? I don't regret the money I spent on this game. (Unlike Michael, my copy did come with an setup guide / instruction manual.) I only wish more games were made in this genre, and of this calibre. I look forward to future titles from Cyan and everyone they're involved with.
A movie such as the above doesn't deserve a review, and neither does this game. Installing a video game simply should not be the ordeal that many seem to be. 'Move to another computer'??? A review is written so the consumer has an idea of what to expect, BEFORE shelling out $50. To most people, another computer is NOT an option.
Why do we accept such shoddy workmanship from software manufacturers, and when someone points this out, they get flamed: 'I wanna know the pixel depth and texture count, I don't give a damn if I have to re-install Windows 74 times first!'
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
so you're telling me that most game reviews are lies? WTF? If a developer sends a product to be reviewed and that product SUCKS, then it deserves a review stating it SUCKS. Seriously.. I don't think the technical problems should be mentioned (it's not really a review of the game), just the gameplay itself. And what about reviews that PC Gamer occasionally does? They always review a game that gets a score of 15%. These reviews usually rip apart the game so badly it's FUNNY. I can remember one game that had a list of 'cons' a mile long and the 'pros' section said "it came in a nice glossy box." Does PC Gamer get calls from developers whose feelings are hurt because they released a shitty game?
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
After going through quite a bit of trouble, and re-installing the game three times, I finally got around to playing it. Trust me, you aren't missing much by returning it.
Finishing the game took me less than a week, and I didn't play it half as obsessively as I usually do. Compared to previous Myst games, this one is incredibly short. I'd estimate that there's about 20 hours of gameplay in this thing, at the most. Compared to the multiple weeks it took me to finish the first one, it's a real disappointment.
The puzzles were a very odd assortment...some of them made absolutely no sense at all. I completed a couple puzzles through pure trial and error, and never actually understood what it was that caused them to be solved - or even what happened once I solved them. Again, compared to the previous games this is a real disappointment. I am used to puzzles in Myst games being logical, and understanding what I am doing and why. On the other hand, some of the puzzles were so simple that I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment in solving them.
The graphics were not very impressive. I'm not sure what the 3D card is being used for, but it's not rendering anything interesting, that's for sure. The QuickTime 3D interface was very clumsy, and got in the way quite often. I missed several clues because I didn't pan the camera enough in some specific direction. The lush, beautifully pre-rendered look of the old Myst games was often absent. In fact, several scenes looked distinctly two-dimensional. The full-motion videos were of very low quality, especially when compared to the surrounding scenery. They looked very grainy and unimpressive.
I ran into a number of bugs during gameplay too. Alt-tabbing to anything else caused my cursor to freeze up, requiring a ctrl-alt-del to unstick it. When I finally finished the game, it crashed my entire system during the credits screen. Had to reboot and everything - and this is in Win2k, not 98/Me.
Quite frankly, I only finished this game because I felt I had to after spending the money on it. I really wanted to like this game, but it was just bad. I can put up with some bugs, or even some poor content...but both of them in vast quantities was just too much for me.
yrs,Ephemeriis
My full review is available at my website: http://ephemeriis.tripod.com/
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Michael, you sound like you're frustrated. However, there's only so much latitude that such frustration warrants, and as a review of a game I'd give your article a 0. If instead you'd posed this as a general discussion about game quality in general (with the pertinent example being MystIII), maybe that would have some merit. As it is, the worthwhile parts of this thread have essentially become that... but it's the mark of a bad slashdot editor to rely on his articles and how he frames them having to be rescued. Try to be a tad professional.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Ah, won't work on Intel chips. This hasn't stopped Microsoft, AOL, or anyone else, why should it stop Myst!?
>>As for the unintelligent people, well, "A fool and his money..."
...are soon partying!"
Memes don't exist. Tell your friends.
I almost care what you think about your own review. No, wait, I don't care at all. In normal reviews, the installation is only part of the article. Apparently the reviewer got so frustrated with the installation process, that he couldn't continue to tell us about the *actual game*, which is, after all, what really matters. /. doesn't need more posts like this one, it needs actual reviews.
As a writer and editor for many game industry publications, you have a point. Yes, the print games publications, and many of the sites associated with them, work on beta copy. It is the only way to remain competitive in a world starved for gaming information. As a result, we tend to ignore some of the simple install problems, or mention them in passing, simply because we are told this problem will be fixed by release, and the VAST majority of the time it is. Further, we get jaded because those of us in the industry get better tech support than the average gamer. You get on the phone and call your PR contact with the company and say you are having a problem and it is stopping you from finishing your preview for Happy Puppy or CGW...well, you can imagine that they don't send your call to the lowest man on the help desk. At the same time, there isn't a hell of a lot that you can do to avoid some of this. If we don't go to press as soon as our competition, we don't have a publication. That simple. No one wants to read a review two months after the game is on the shelves. And with print magazines, if you always waited for boxed copy, that is just what would happen. So there is a certain amount of trust involved between the game company and the reviewer. However, what does happen, if you are an ethical editor, which most are, is that you remember if a flack lied to you about a problem being fixed before release. And the next time you hear that, you make sure that you state very strongly in your copy that you had a problem with the game from a technical perspective. Provide fair warning to the potential buyer. However, your statement that you wouldn't be in business any more if you printed bad reviews simply isn't true in my experience. I panned more Take 2 games in a row than I can count, just to pick one company. If you are good sized pub or site, they can't really mark you off the list. And the idea that the game companies don't care about shipping product with this kind of problem because of the return situation is on crack. Yes, pre release publicity drives some game sales in the first few days. However, word of mouth sells a tremendous number of games. The majority. Word gets out a game doesn't work or play well, and reviews or no reviews, the company takes a bath. I understand that there are problems with the review and editorial process in gaming, no doubt, but the solutions aren't as simple as they appear to some people. And the idea that reviewers don't call a bad game because they will be "cut off" is prevailent and bogus. jpw
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
It's true. Linux stuff is usually a huge pain in the ass to install. Get 30 libraries, spend hours compiling them all, patch the kernel, pray it works, see what other software you just broke by "updating" your shared libraries. In particular, web browsers are bad for this.
I've often had to modify the source just to get stuff to compile.
I've had to replace sound cards, video cards, and network cards to make Linux work on a system.
To me, the results are often worth it. But it's a hell of a lot of work, and if I judged it by the same standard used in this review, Linux, and most Linux software, would get the same 0/10 ("You had to do what with the seat?").
If it's an awesome game on compatible systems, it deserves better than that.
--
All of this hassle in a windows game??! But isn't windoze easy to use??
Imagine the horror if this had been a linux release!
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
How can you not see that this is an intentional troll? Slashdot is meant to be a place of discussion, not pissing people off. Unless I missed some sarcasam here, and this is a joke? In that case, my apologies. Otherwise, yahoo has this voice over ip chat thing where everyone insults each other. It's pretty fun, and a great way to release frustration. - Old Man Murray ROCKS. -
... and it told me almost nothing I need to know. OK, thanks for letting me know it's broken. And I agree with you, copy protection is a bad idea. But what about the game itself?
I especially didn't appreciate how you spent the entire final three paragraphs reviewing your own review, patting yourself on the back for being courageous enough to tell it like it is.
I'm a fan of the Myst series, too. So what about the game? What did you think of the storyline? You couldn't run Myst III. Did you give up? When you say Ubisoft is "stringing customers along," does that mean something happened to you, personally? Or is based on hearsay and online message forums?
Your review was utterly biased towards Wintel users. Do you know if Mac users will have the same kind of problems?
Pepole, don't be idiots.
Only an idiot would belive this is an honest review of the game and say dumbass things like "Uuh, how can you give it 0 in gameplay when you havent played the game?"
The 0-ratings is just rethorics, and quite effective rethorics too.
I for one really thought the article was interresting, because I read it for what it was - a debate opinion saying: a) That games in general (and Myst III in particular) shold be programmed more solidly. b) That the specs on the box in this case are false (in this case the Safeguard thing is omitted). And c) that game publications should put more pressure on game companies by ranting more about this.
cheers! -M
...um...like...a sig...
Any college student had better be able to structure an argument based on facts, and be able to recognize when an argument doesn't have the facts to back it up.
You'd be surprised... Try reading the opinions section in the University of Oklahoma student newspaper. Very few of those have any facts to back up the arguments -- mostly just name-calling and attempts to force beliefs on others, not trying to make others understand the author's point of view.
And this is coming from journalism students?
Sorry for being offtopic...
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Cole's Axiom: The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing
No matter how well you try and copy protect something that you are putting into customer's hands, there will always be a way to crack it. The ONLY model that has any chance of working is the Everquest style of putting the actal servers somewhere that people can't touch.
Why can't people just figure this out by now. If you make a really great game, there are enough honest people in the world that you will get paid eventually...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I tried to install Myst III on my laptop and Installsheild wouldn't even get me to the main welcome screen. Installsheild would crash in kernel32.dll, and we all know what they means! Anyways since I had a G4 on my desk I decided to see how it worked there. The install went flawlessly under Mac OSX, but the sound and graphics were extreamly choppy while running the game. Since I was running this under Classic and not the true OS 9, I rebooted to OS 9 and everything else has worked flawlessly. It looks like Ubisoft has put almost all, if not all of their efforts into making Myst III work great on a mac, but not very well on a PC. If you do have a G3 or G4 to play on I would recommend getting Myst III. The 360 degree views of the game are wonderfull!
Most game companies view reviews as "cheap advertisments" anyway. Getting a 70-90 point score on a 100 point scale in a magazine for $50 is a LOT cheaper than spending a couple thousand to take out an ad.
For example, I remember reviewing a while back. I don't recall the company, but it was one of those "motion-video keyboard" games, where you watched grainy motion video and pressed keyboard keys to change the video, giving some semblance of a "game". This was in the nacient era of CD-ROM's, and it was supposed to be a "fighting game", but anyone could tell the game sucked. Most games of this genre did.
So I wrote a review saying the game sucked, and gave as one of my reasons "pseudo-videogame play does not constitute real gameplay". I gave the game a zero score.
Boy did I ever get roasted. First, my editor laughed because he thought the review was funny, and he printed it. Then we got a call from the game developer, saying they would never send up a free review copy of a game again (magazines rely on this -- they rarely ever purchase games). Then they threatened to pull advertising, and tell other game companies not to advertise.
Needless to say, my editor was no longer laughing. The magazine published a "counterpoint" review by a different writer, the gaming magazine industry's way of an apology. From that point on, I knew I could never write an "honest" review of a game again, at least for any noteworthy publication.
But since this guy paid for the game, and it's only Slashdot, this is "acceptable" in this case.
In a dream a while ago, I dreamed that I was playing a future version of Myst where the graphics were good and things could rotate.
However, My dream was snazzier, and eventually it became a bang-bang-don't-shoot-just-survive 3D game. It was pretty cool, and that would IMHO be a good way to go, as long as the graphics are cool and it is still a puzzle.
well stated dude, couldn't agree more. shouts for universal (or otherwise) open sourcing are generally similar to this (from what i read...), and either they are made by people who are not developers and have no idea what developing really entails, or they are part time developers or do programming for a hobby.
the amount of time and work that goes into creating a game like myst, or any other large-scale production like this cannot be overestitmated, and open-sourcing something like this (yes, windows included) is absolutely ridiculous. if you want something to be free, do it for yourself or wait for some majorly generous person to say 'here you go.' dont beg for it, beggers cant be choosy. just stick with the copy of fortune that comes with your redhat linux.
---- if i told you the real deal then i would be hauled away in a mental-hospital wagon
I recently got this game, and it runs flawlessly on my G4 system, very fast and smooth. Its a good game too, especially if you are a fan of the Myst series (and I am) but, like Riven before it, it hasn't captured and sucked me in the way Myst did in '95 ('96?). Oh well, its still very enjoyable. I have read on various message boards however that people with older macs aren't having such luck (my system is a 450DP with Radeon video and 704MB RAM... maybe this has something to do with it?) But I think they maybe could have come up with a better (ie, compatible) copy protection scheme, rather than purposefully putting in bad sectors on the discs and screwing people with older cdrom drives over. I guess I just got lucky :-)
sudo eat my shorts
Shutdown Wintendo. Insert Redhat disc and install. Place Myst disc into Micorwave cook for about 10 seconds on high.
In a sense there is some poetic justice - bad publicity, and decreased sales from installation problems, because they were too concerned about losing money over piracy.
Also, I find it in very bad taste to release a game, saying it supports specific hardware, and then including in the Readme, that a patch will be available to make it work with said-card. Very poor. Can't blame the review companies though - they get prerelease, and are only concerned with the -game-, not the requirements, or problems.
There's a reason you wouldn't see this kind of review in a publication, and it has nothing to do with ad dollars or that kind of nonsense. A review is based entirely on one person's experience playing a game; it's not a summary of thousands of opinions. (It is supposed to reflect or challenge others, though.) In other words, if you do not experience certain bugs or problems with copy protection, it's likely you won't mention them in a review. And frankly, you shouldn't, unless you're extremely careful about the language you use (i.e. "others have reported problems...")
As for this specific issue, Safedisc historically is a problem for certain CD-ROMs. Most reviewers are aware of this and have purchased CD-ROM and DVD drives that are known to work. Should we have to do this? No. Should users? No. Copy protection sucks, we know this and publishers know this. But it in theory stops friends from making copies for friends, while making certain that there's plenty of support nightmares to deal with. Steve Computer Games Magazine
So let me get this straight, you never got the game to install right? But you still put a review reviewed the games graphics sound and other information. Keep in mind that you must actually play the game before you game review it. This being the key to knowing the graphics, sound and other. Hmm, so lets conclude this matter. You don't actualy play the game, most likely because of a fault on your system setup or compatibility issues (it happens, but that's life and you find another machine it works on), but you still manage to get a review of the game which you never played (once again keep in mind you must play the game to review something which would only be a variable of playing the game). You may be in need of medication.
That's not the issue at hand.
Myst III says ON THE BOX that it will support __________ (insert 16-bit graphics accel's, all CD-ROM drives, et cetera).
That, my friend, is an all-out lie. I will not tolerate something like that, and I know you certainly wouldn't (if in the situation) either.
While yes, there is no law requiring software engineers to produce software supporting every possible hardware platform in existence, there are laws requiring software engineers to support every hardware platform they promise to support on the box.
[IANAL, but I believe fraudlency laws govern such promises, correct?]
Hi everyone, I'm the Associate Producer on Myst III: Exile. I've been with the project since it started two years ago, and I wanted to address some of the topics on this post.
First and foremost, of course, are the compatibility problems that many users are experiencing. Many people feel that we shipped the game with a large number of known bugs. That is not the case. We deeply regret the bugs that are in the final version of the game, and you can be assured that we wouldn't have shipped if we were aware of them. We are doing everything we can to make this right. We have already fixed the CD drive letter problem, and are currently testing a patch that fixes the game so that it will run on Intel, SiS, and Neomagic video cards. Future releases of the game will have these fixes built in, so if you buy this game in a couple months, you will have the patches built in.
Second, there are some concerns about a few 3D accelerators that won't run the game, most notably the Voodoo 2 and 3. As has been said, this is a limitation of the cards, which cannot support the 32 bit color that Myst III requires. Did we knowingly exclude those users when we chose to build the assets in the game at 32 bit color, thus raising the bar for the game's graphics? Yes, we did. Did we make a mistake on the minimum requirements when we said it only requires 16 bit color. Again, yes, we did, and I regret the error. Is it unreasonable for us to release a game that requires 32 bit color? No, I don't think it is. Myst III still has shockingly low system requirements. An Nvidia TNT card can run the game as well as a GeForce, which we feel is an accomplishment given the graphical quality of the game.
To summarize, I want to personally apologize for the bugs in the game. I apologize for the strife they have caused. We are doing everything in our power to correct the situation.
Finally, I'm glad to see some cooler heads have prevailed and posted reviews of the actual game. I think Presto Studios has a lot to be proud of with Myst III. The graphics are at least movie quality, and there is an unbelievable amount of detail in the game. The story stands well on its own, and I feel it has a lot more drama than the previous Myst games. Granted, we made the game easier than Riven, but I don't feel that's a disadvantage. Not everyone is a hard core gamer, and we wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the game. I think we met that goal.
It has been very personally gratifying to see all the good reviews on the net and other press. Gamespot gave Myst III: Exile an 8.7, IGN gave us an 8.0, and the San Francisco Chronicle gave us their highest rating. For a sequel to the games that have a reputation for killing the adventure genre, I think those are impressive scores. If you can, I suggest you find an opportunity to decide for yourself. We've found that people who play Myst III for 10 minutes usually play to the finish. Even my parents like it!
So to finish up, thank you all for your interest in the game. We're doing our best to get it up and running on everyone's machine. Thanks to all those who have shown patience and good will through the stress. It is definitely noticed, and all of us here at Ubi Soft and Presto appreciate it.
Regards,
Daniel Achterman
Associate Producer
Myst III: Exile
Ok I understand that there were technical dificulties but WHAT ABOUT THE GAME?!!!! I picked it up myself and had none of the difficulties described. The graphics are amazeing thus far the gameplay is the same as in the previouse versions and what they would expect. A review should cover more than a few dificulties that some people are haveing. Mention it then move on and talk about the rest of the package. PS. Myst III is far from the first game I've recieved that was just a cd in a box.
As with most folks replying or posting in this thread, i have been a HUGE fan of the Myst series since its inception by Robyn and Rand Miller, the original Cyan team. So, of course, as each new chapter of this excellent series becomes available, I shell out another $50 bucks or more. On Exile, I splurged for the $67 Collector's Edition. Why? Because i could... and because I'm a completist. I did not experience any of the aforementioned software or hardware problems upon installing the game, but that's probably because I'm not running a PC, rather, a 500 mhz G4 with 512 megs of RAM. I tried first the suggested easy install, which runs most of the animations / movies from the discs. Under this option, the video playback was unbelievably choppy. So much so, that I gave up after only the introductory movie. I then opted for the full install, which requires a massive 2.3 GIGS of hard drive space. As cumbersome as this is, it did at least eliminate the need for all that pesky CD swapping required in Riven. Once I had completed the full install, the game ran beautifully throughout, from start to finish. Never once did I have a crash, hang, or any other such nonsense. Sad to be you, those on PC's. See, there IS something to be said for hardware standardization. I found the gameplay to be straightforward, although at times a tad simplistic, and beautifully rendered. Of all the Ages, I found only one fault that was glaring enough to be distracting from the overall gameplay, and that was the sorry animation for the oceans. Small pools and creeks looked great, but they used the same animations on larger bodies, i.e. everywhere else, and it looked obviously fake. The lighting effects, as well as the integration of full motion movies into the scenery left me feeling as if I were actually visiting these places. Gone were the fuzzy outlines and colorings of integrated movies in still frames. All that paired with the ability to scan 360 degrees at any location made this a much more enjoyable trip into the Myst universe. As I mentioned earlier, I did find the gameplay to be a bit simplistic at times. I completed the game after only about 6 or 7 hours, whereas Riven and Myst took considerably longer to puzzle out. The Collector's Edition comes with the Prima guide for the game, which I read once I had finished play. Apparently, some of the puzzles were intended to be much harder than they actually were, with a couple leaving me confused as to why they even existed to begin with. (Namely, the gears puzzle beneath the elevator.) Overall, while rendered well, I do not hold Myst III on par with previous Myst titles. I do not regret having spent the money I did for this title, however, I do believe M3 could have been much better. I left this game with a feeling of "That's it?" rather than "Wow, that's it!" For those of you still pondering whether or not to pick up this title, I suggest waiting until it hits the half price or bargain bins, then definitely adding it to your collection.