Uru Ages Beyond Myst - PC review

17 March 2004 18:00 GMT / By Andy Lynn

True 3D is the major selling point to the latest in the Myst Series; you can play from the third person view (default) or switch to first person, although sometimes the game will make its mind up for you, in the style of Tomb Raider. Yeesha, the 200 year old daughter of regular Myst Character Atrus, leads you to an entrance to the underground civilisation of D'Ni. The game will have you unlocking its secrets with Yeesha's help and cryptic clues.

After creating your avatar, you control the character's moves throughout the different Ages in the game with the biggest amount of freedom in the series so far. You need it, since the exploration is the largest element of the game that will lead you to solving the puzzles, and this will be as comfortable as a pair of slippers for the game's stalwart fans who kept the first four games as the biggest of all time until the arrival of The Sims. Players are serenaded by Peter Gabriel's original song from his Hit compilation. As a fan, was good for me to hear but some people may just skip it.

The promised massively multiplayer online world has been closed down, another casualty of an increasingly tough all-or-nothing environment, failing in spite of, or maybe even because of, being free. So there's single player in the box and when you finish it, it's trade-in fodder.

Despite the 3D, most aspects of the gameplay are comfortable and familiar and the graphics top-notch, although that's expected of modern games. It's just a shame that the platform-style action brings the headaches from a totally different genre to this adventure series.

Verdict

A decade after the first Myst game came along and busted all sales records, you already know whether you like or hate this series and there's nothing to draw in the unconverted. The camera angles bring back bad Tomb Raider memories. Closing down the MMO server a month ago, when the game shipped at the end of last year meant it wasn't even up for two months. Only fans should really put themselves out to play this game but luckily for Ubi Soft, there are millions of them across the globe. These fans have already fallen for the “Jam Tomorrow” approach to multiplayer once- they won't again. Myst 5 will need to have multiplayer out of the box before it will be seen as anything more than another stopgap- in spite of continuing overall quality.