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Two great games for a great price
So far I've only played Myst and Riven so those are the only two that I'm writing about. I've been playing adventure games for about five years but I never got around to playing Myst or Riven. I think I tried playing both a few years ago but I guess they didn't interest me at the time and I pretty much quit before I got started. So when I saw the Myst 10th Anniversary DVD, which included three games, I thought "What the heck." Unfortunately, I bought the games before coming to amazon.com to read everyone else's reviews. Once I did, I realized that all the crashes that were occuring when I tried to play Myst were not unique. I, too, took the listed system requirements on the box to be accurate - obviously not a good idea. Fortunately, I have a laptop with Windows Me and even though this OS isn't mentioned in the system requirements, Myst and Riven played fine. However, I know I missed a lot regarding visuals since I have a much better video card on my PC.
Anyway...I found Myst to be an entertaining game of medium difficulty. I wasn't playing games when Myst came out in the early 90s so but I've heard about what a gaming breakthrough it was at the time. The graphics certainly pale when compared to games of today (Syberia, etc.). Even so, the puzzles are challenging enough to still make the game interesting and I enjoyed playing it.
However, Riven is a whole other story. The graphics are much better but this game is HARD. There are about the same number of "worlds" to explore but they are much more detailed and there is so much to do. The puzzles are more complex requiring more steps that might are not all be located in the same place. You might have to turn a switch in one place, then go half way across the "world" to push a button and go somewhere else to complete the action. I think that anyone who can play this game without getting hints from a walkthrough must be a darn good player (a heck of a lot better than me). I don't know if I could say I 'enjoyed' playing Riven but after finally finishing the game, I felt exhausted (as though I were the one physically travelling from one world to another), but I also felt a sense of accomplishment.
I would definitely recommend both games. But as other reviews pointed out, if your computer's OS is Windows XP, and you do not have access to an earlier Window's OS version, then you're outta luck. On to Myst III!
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