I got my copy of Myst IV yesterday, so I’m starting a thread for anyone else who might have it.
A word of warning, because I was not aware of this until I bought the game: the game is exclusively on DVD (and two of them at that). No DVD drive, no play. Luckily, that’s not a problem for me. The full install of the game took up a whopping 8 gig of hard drive space. Luckily, I had that too.
Additionally, it came bundled with Myst III (on DVD), which thus far was probably my favorite Myst game of them all.
Anyway, I installed it, and so far, I think this game is going to absolutely rock. The cinematics are astounding - my mother wanted to know what movie I was watching. When I told her it was a computer game, she sat next to me, enchanted by the idea that a game could be so beautiful (her idea of good games are things like Loderunner on the C64). The first puzzle is pretty much a gimme - but my mother thought it was great. Atrus is with you, and guides you through what he wants you to do, and reprimands and cajoles (and encourages) you as you try different things. My mother loved it when he said things like “Why are you [doing this action]? The [thing affected] was already set just fine!”
And I didn’t get much beyond that because after I finished the task, Atrus was giving me some instructions on what I needed to do next, but my mother was yammering away about how neat the game was, so I just quit without saving (thank OG you can actually save games, unlike in Uru.)
Other things: Everything is so dynamic. Outside, there’s wind, and little bits of leaves whirling by, and birds diving and swooping (and not in some stupid loop). You can hear everything, it’s just breathtakingly beautiful. The sounds live up to the standards of Myst games everywhere; when you “tap” on something with the cursor, (and you can tap on pretty much anything you see) the sound you hear is relevant - tap on paper, and you hear a thin, papery sound. Tap on wood and you hear a wooden noise. Tap on metal… you get the idea. It’s amazing. And of course, the music rocks. Although I was a little disappointed; everything I’d read led me to believe Peter Gabriel had done the whole score, but apparently he only did one track. No matter though, it’s still wonderful!
Lastly, the interface is wonderfully intuitive. There are more choices than just moving forward, or activating a button. You can pull drawers open (and you actually pull them open by clicking and dragging with your mouse) then push them closed, twist levers, turn pages of the book (this was the neatest in my opinion, it felt like I was turning the page of a book). There are new tools, like a camera for taking pictures of anything you want to (great for taking pictures of journal pages) and a journal to record any notes in-game. And my beloved zip-mode is back - and better than ever. It will show you images of places you can zip too; no more of simply linear zipping three screens ahead, from the looks of it, you can zip to any location you’ve already been to (I imagine there are some restrictions, they likely need to be in the same age).
Anyone else have it? Thoughts, impressions? To me, it looks like Ubisoft might just redeem itself after the huge letdown that was Uru. This one promises to be the best game yet.