Myst V idiocy
Apr. 4th, 2008 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73So I'm (as usual) a little behind in terms of current game releases. We've been playing Myst V: End of Ages on and off for a few months. I gave it to the huz Christmas 2006, and, well, it took us a little while to pick it up (largely because we were so disgusted with the puzzle design/user interface in the Wild Jungle section of Myst IV).
Our overall impression so far is that Myst V generally combines the best aspects of Myst III (good puzzles, but no story to speak of) and Myst IV (terrible puzzles for half the game, but a good story). The story is definitely interesting, and the puzzles have - usually - been pretty well designed. Sometimes, though.... Two occasions stand out so far as Particularly Stupid.
Sigh. Every so often, we're really glad that the UHS website is there!
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EDIT: But even UHS doesn't help with random crashes-so-badly-that-you-have-to-restart-the-machine. Sigh!
Our overall impression so far is that Myst V generally combines the best aspects of Myst III (good puzzles, but no story to speak of) and Myst IV (terrible puzzles for half the game, but a good story). The story is definitely interesting, and the puzzles have - usually - been pretty well designed. Sometimes, though.... Two occasions stand out so far as Particularly Stupid.
Minor background: The puzzle-solving is mostly done through the use of Tablets. Think of it kind of like PictoChat on the DS Lite. There are creatures around that understand certain symbols that you draw on the Tablets. In the Ages we've visited so far, there's been a verb symbol (turn on the geysers! make it rain! move the moon!) and several location symbols, which, once understood, generally allow the player to teleport to the location where that symbol is found. (In the first two ages, the creatures teleport with the tablet to the location; the location symbol then appears on the 'home' pedestal of the age, and the player can then place his hand on that location symbol and bamf, a la a linking book.)
Near the end of the Ice Age, there's obviously a point where you can kind of see a location symbol at a bit of a distance. We figured it was fairly obvious that you were supposed to draw the symbol, the tablet would learn it, and you could then bamf to that spot. We tried and tried and tried and tried drawing the symbol with minor variations to try to make up for what we couldn't quite see, with absolutely no success. We finally had to look at a walkthrough, which had a nice clear diagram of the symbol as drawn on the table - and which had some minor variations in proportions to what we'd been drawing - at which point we were able to continue with the age. The interface shouldn't have been so fussy: we clearly knew what the heck to do, it was a matter of better directions being needed in order to perform the proper execusion. Or something!
We're now working on the Beach Age. We found a location symbol in a place that the creatures couldn't get to themselves, and were able to put it into the Tablet's memory - the creatures understood it, but didn't teleport to that location pedestal. Therefore, the location symbol was not engraved on the 'home' pedestal, therefore we couldn't bamf there. We just spent an extremely frustrating session trying to figure out how we were supposed to bamf back to that location/what the local NPC meant by a particular statement. Finally looked at a walkthrough... Turns out that YOU have to stick the slate on the new location-pedestal, at which point the new location symbol will appear on the 'home' pedestal and be usable for bamfing. Totally non-obvious, as far as we were concerned.
Near the end of the Ice Age, there's obviously a point where you can kind of see a location symbol at a bit of a distance. We figured it was fairly obvious that you were supposed to draw the symbol, the tablet would learn it, and you could then bamf to that spot. We tried and tried and tried and tried drawing the symbol with minor variations to try to make up for what we couldn't quite see, with absolutely no success. We finally had to look at a walkthrough, which had a nice clear diagram of the symbol as drawn on the table - and which had some minor variations in proportions to what we'd been drawing - at which point we were able to continue with the age. The interface shouldn't have been so fussy: we clearly knew what the heck to do, it was a matter of better directions being needed in order to perform the proper execusion. Or something!
We're now working on the Beach Age. We found a location symbol in a place that the creatures couldn't get to themselves, and were able to put it into the Tablet's memory - the creatures understood it, but didn't teleport to that location pedestal. Therefore, the location symbol was not engraved on the 'home' pedestal, therefore we couldn't bamf there. We just spent an extremely frustrating session trying to figure out how we were supposed to bamf back to that location/what the local NPC meant by a particular statement. Finally looked at a walkthrough... Turns out that YOU have to stick the slate on the new location-pedestal, at which point the new location symbol will appear on the 'home' pedestal and be usable for bamfing. Totally non-obvious, as far as we were concerned.
Sigh. Every so often, we're really glad that the UHS website is there!
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EDIT: But even UHS doesn't help with random crashes-so-badly-that-you-have-to-restart-the-machine. Sigh!
