MYST
     Broderbund/Cyan/Electronic Arts - RRP œ39.99 (PC CD-ROM)
               (Mouse controlled graphic adventure)
                     Reviewed by Neil Shipman

"You have just stumbled upon a most intriguing book, a book titled
Myst. You have no idea where it came from, who wrote it, or how
old it is. Reading through its pages provides you with only a
superbly crafted description of an island. But it's just a book,
isn't it?

As you reach the end of the book, you lay your hand on a page.
Suddenly your own world dissolves into blackness, replaced with
the island world the pages described. Now you're here, wherever
here is, with no option but to explore..."

                                  ...and that is all you are told.

The first thing that hits you about Myst are the stunning
graphics. Then the sounds assail your ears - water slapping
against a pier, gulls calling - and in no time at all you are
drawn into the adventure.

Beginning on a dock you see a large switch in front of you, a
sunken ship in the water to your right and a door into the
dockside to your left. Wandering up the hill you find a note
telling you where a message has been left. Exploration of the
island of Myst will give you the information you need to access
this message which gives you a clue on how to proceed.

Large cogwheels occupy a raised site on the east of the island,
separated from a spaceship on the northwest corner by the
buildings of the planetarium and the library. An avenue runs south
from the library to a circular bowl containing a model ship, then
onwards to a clock tower at the far end. Trees on either side hide
certain structures and other items of interest. Above everything
looms a mountain peak with an obviously artificial top.

In the library you find that most of the books have been burnt but
those that are left in the bookcase make interesting reading. They
tell of the journeys of an author, Atrus, and his sons, Sirrus and
Achenar, to worlds which he has created by his fantastic writings.

Set apart from these on two separate shelves are a red and a blue
book. When you open each of these you find that Sirrus has been
trapped in one, Achenar in the other. Each implores you in a
message only just decipherable through static to release him. To
do so you must enter the four Ages of Myst which are still
accessible and return with the appropriate colour pages.

All the locations and objects are depicted in incredible rendered
artwork nearly photo-realistic in quality. The pictures take up
two-thirds of the screen and by the time you finish you will have
seen some 2500 highly detailed images. Geography and perspective
are faultless. Add to this over an hour's animation plus superb
shadowing which shows particularly in the turning of handles or of
blades on a windmill and you have worlds you can believe in.
Character animation, though limited, is in the form of full motion
QuickTime video.

The screen is not cluttered up with a list of commands, inventory,
etc. A menu bar is accessed when the cursor is moved to the top of
the screen. This shows a File menu for saving games (an unlimited
number and only 630K in size), restoring and exiting, and an
Options menu with three choices: Transitions, Zip Mode and Drop
Page - all with appropriate hot keys.

Motion and interaction are simple. The cursor is a small hand
which points forward, left or right (and sometimes up or down).
Just click where you go or on what you want to look at, pick up or
use. It's that easy. Turning left or right will rotate you through
either 90 or 180 degrees depending on where you are. Sometimes the
cursor changes into a grabbing hand to enable you to pull a lever
or hold your hand on an object. A few items can be carried, in
which case the pointer indicates what you are holding, then
reverts to normal when the item is used. When pages are dropped
they return to their original location.

The four worlds you will travel to are self-contained, very
different, and each presents its own unique problems. Apart from
the points of interest you have noted in your reading you need no
further information in order to solve the varied puzzles in each
one. That's not to say it's easy! Indeed, Myst contains quite a
number of difficult puzzles and to come up with ones which were
novel even to this seasoned adventurer is quite something.

Multimedia does, of course, allow designers to use up hundreds of
megabytes in providing dialogue, sound and music. In Myst the
sounds are always there, adding to the realism, and they play an
integral part in a number of the puzzles. Birds singing, the
whistling of the wind, running water, motors chugging away, gears
grinding, clanking machinery, waves breaking, bells chiming - the
list goes on and on. In addition to these there are 45 minutes of
perfectly understated, atmospheric, original music.

Without scrolling this is more an interactive slideshow than an
interactive movie but with a fast PC it is possible to move around
the gameworld at a good speed. In Zip Mode a lightning bolt
sometimes replaces your hand pointer and moves you still faster by
jumping to locations you have already seen. The Transitions option
just slows everything down and is, frankly, unnecessary. [Just a
cautionary word here: if you move too fast it appears that the
music files can't keep pace and you may end up finding that your
mouse pointer becomes rather unresponsive. If this happens, quit
and reload to a saved position.]

My one quibble with the adventure is that when you restore a saved
position you are returned to either the library on Myst island or
the beginning of the Age you are in rather than to the exact point
at which you saved the game. But this is a minor point and should
in no way detract from my overall assessment of the game as an
audio-visual masterpiece which breaks new ground in multimedia
adventuring. Myst is an enthralling, surrealistic, highly detailed
fantasy. The sights and sounds are a knockout. Play it and be
amazed!

A 15 minute QuickTime video, The Making Of Myst, makes interesting
viewing, allowing you to see and hear how the designers, Rand and
Robyn Miller, set about their two year task of creating the
adventure.

Installation was a cinch and only took a minute with the program
automatically detecting my hardware set-up. My one worry came when
I read the section in the manual on memory requirements. Myst need
10,000K of memory to run! TEN THOUSAND K?! Surely a misprint? But
on reading further I found that this could be a combination of
physical and virtual memory and the technical notes told me
exactly how to go about increasing the size of the Windows virtual
memory swap file. No problem after all. There are also full notes
on how to change your video display driver if you are not already
up and running in 640 x 480 x 256. Extra files are provided on the
disk for Sound Blaster 16 owners who do not have the most recent
drivers. If you still have problems technical support is available
from Electronic Arts Customer Service - phone number and address
are provided.

PC system requirements are:

386DX 33MHz processor or higher (486 recommended)
4MB RAM
Windows 3.1; MS/PC-DOS 5.0 or higher
Super VGA Graphics Card (640 x 480, 256 colours)
MPC compliant sound card
Mouse
Hard Disk with 4MB of free space
CD-ROM drive













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