confession
May. 14th, 2004 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI just don't *get* Myst.
Was a (birthday?) gift back in HS (had I asked for it?); got through a couple sessions back then poking around before realizing I could be having more fun playing Crystal Quest, tetris, solitaire etc.
Apparently this is still true. See, am replacing my stalwart ancientMac (who's a goood mac for making it this long, yes oo is) with Chaos's shiiiiny laptop in less than a month, and was thinking, you know, before I retire this thing from regular duty (except for Crystal Quest...), I should freakin' solve Myst, already. I'm unemployed and all...
But, like, shrug. Just spent maybe a couple hours all told, poking around the starting island, reviewing what's there, not getting any farther than I ever had before which was pretty much "ooh, gee, lots of things where I should input some numbers. whee." I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to be all intrigued with these puzzles to solve? Maybe I'm just not that smart, or whatever, but the idea of putting god knows how much time into fucking around with what one gaming friend describes very aptly as "really poorly designed user interfaces" just makes me go enh.
I mean, for one thing, it's *slow*. I may have certain suspicions that my actions in one place may be having effects somewhere else, but if I was doing this in an rpg, the DM wouldn't keep describing the trip back and forth between known locations, he'd say "okay, you go back to the other room and...". Why can't I bookmark locations and then jump back to them from a menu instead of clicky-clicky-clicking my way back and forth? Also, why can't I pause and get back to the finder to check my email or play a badly-needed game of BreakThru for a little action? I mean, yes, this game is from the early 90s, but even in the early 90s the mighty Multifinder was able to run multiple applications at once... Also, and this is just a pet peeve, there seems to be vital audio content. and I have yet to figure out how to enable deaf-person mode so I can get subtitles and at least be listening to music or something.
Sigh. What it really boils down to is that Myst is a slooow-paced game for the patient, and I'm so not. It's like listening to someone read out loud when you know you could be reading three or four times as fast and be there already twitch twitch.
And yet despite all this I feel a perverse desire to keep poking at it in hopes that eventually something exciting will happen. I mean, all those people thought it was cool, right? It must have some redeeming features. Maybe once you get to the other Ages?
Was a (birthday?) gift back in HS (had I asked for it?); got through a couple sessions back then poking around before realizing I could be having more fun playing Crystal Quest, tetris, solitaire etc.
Apparently this is still true. See, am replacing my stalwart ancientMac (who's a goood mac for making it this long, yes oo is) with Chaos's shiiiiny laptop in less than a month, and was thinking, you know, before I retire this thing from regular duty (except for Crystal Quest...), I should freakin' solve Myst, already. I'm unemployed and all...
But, like, shrug. Just spent maybe a couple hours all told, poking around the starting island, reviewing what's there, not getting any farther than I ever had before which was pretty much "ooh, gee, lots of things where I should input some numbers. whee." I suppose this is the part where I'm supposed to be all intrigued with these puzzles to solve? Maybe I'm just not that smart, or whatever, but the idea of putting god knows how much time into fucking around with what one gaming friend describes very aptly as "really poorly designed user interfaces" just makes me go enh.
I mean, for one thing, it's *slow*. I may have certain suspicions that my actions in one place may be having effects somewhere else, but if I was doing this in an rpg, the DM wouldn't keep describing the trip back and forth between known locations, he'd say "okay, you go back to the other room and...". Why can't I bookmark locations and then jump back to them from a menu instead of clicky-clicky-clicking my way back and forth? Also, why can't I pause and get back to the finder to check my email or play a badly-needed game of BreakThru for a little action? I mean, yes, this game is from the early 90s, but even in the early 90s the mighty Multifinder was able to run multiple applications at once... Also, and this is just a pet peeve, there seems to be vital audio content. and I have yet to figure out how to enable deaf-person mode so I can get subtitles and at least be listening to music or something.
Sigh. What it really boils down to is that Myst is a slooow-paced game for the patient, and I'm so not. It's like listening to someone read out loud when you know you could be reading three or four times as fast and be there already twitch twitch.
And yet despite all this I feel a perverse desire to keep poking at it in hopes that eventually something exciting will happen. I mean, all those people thought it was cool, right? It must have some redeeming features. Maybe once you get to the other Ages?
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Re: You have been misled
Date: 2004-05-15 01:10 am (UTC)Myst is really, it seems to me, two things rolled into one:
1. A visually and aurally spectacular rendering of a really cool-looking interactive environment.
2. A set of puzzles, almost all of which consist of attempting to figure out the worst-designed user interfaces ever in the history bad UI design.
I loved _Myst_ for the first thing, so it took me quite a while (possibly until around the time I finished the game) to realize that I had pretty much no interest in the second thing. Puzzles in general, I've gradually learned, don't interest me much, and puzzles that consist mostly of guessing the intentions of the worst UI designer ever are interesting to me only as an occasional student of bad UI design.
The story isn't a very good story in terms of plot; in particular, the ending pretty much sucks.
So if you're not enjoying the experience, don't subject yourself to more of it. If the lovingly detailed steampunk look and the lush sound effects don't appeal to you for their own sake, *and* you don't like the kind of puzzles they provide, then you almost certainly won't enjoy the game.
(There's also, for me, a certain amount of sense-of-wonder involved in traveling through the various Ages and so on; but that derives mostly from appreciation of the visuals and sound and atmosphere.)
...Agreed that it's unfortunate that the UI of the game itself isn't as good as it could be. Would you appreciate it more to know that it's all basically a giant Hypercard stack?