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You may not revel in Revelation, but you will be impressed! As a long time fan of the Myst games (read the books... own the soundtracks), I was thrilled to get my hands on the 4th installation of the series a few months ago. Unlike some other reviewers, the DVD drive on my machine (Mac G4) had no trouble with the installation or play of the game - ran like a charm. First off, the look and sound of the new game are simply stunning. The 360˚ moving panorama format is used to superb effect, with moving trees, water, and animals in lifelike digital detail. Digitally rendered models are combined with pre-rendered backdrops for a 'living' world that you can totally get lost in. The look of this game is on par with anything we've seen from Pixar. And Jack Wall is back again with another lush score, which features a full orchestra, plenty of unusual ethnic instruments and a lovely choir of womens' voices. Peter Gabriel even pitches in a song ("Curtains", the b-side to "Big Time" from 1987) for a short abstract mid-game music video. The attention to detail in both sound and visuals is really top notch, and is worth the price of the game. Myst: Revelation also features more full-screen video and live acting than any previous episode. Sadly, the intensity of Brad Dourif from "Myst: Exile" is not matched by the talent in Revelation. Perhaps the pedestrian script is at fault, but most of the acting (particularly from Guy Sprung as Achenar) comes across as overdone community theater. Juliette Gosselin's Yeesha, while often endearing, has a somewhat unnatural way of delivering her dialogue, choosing to emphasize words in sentences that don't sound right... Perhaps it's because they're all Canadian? In fact, I'd say that Myst creator Rand Miller, reprising his role as Atrus, delivers the only somewhat natural performance in the game. I'd like to see Myst 5 bring the acting and script up to the level of the technology. The roughest edges in Myst: Revelation, however, come from the gameplay itself. While many puzzles have that familiar 'Myst feel' with clear physical connections to observe, levers to move, and switches to flip, the puzzles seem to get less inspired and more abstract as the game goes on. Where the earlier games really tied the puzzles into the story, Myst 4 has a few puzzles that seem rather arbitrary - like the developers had some puzzles ideas hanging around and shoehorned them into the game to fill it out. It's the more transcendent puzzles that get to be particularly incomprehensible. I really intended to play this game without using the included 'interactive digital hint guide,' but I eventually had to give up on that dream. A good puzzle requires you to think outside the box - Myst 4 often required me to think outside of the game itself, trying to decipher the will of the developer who created the puzzle instead of the game character. Too many puzzles were simply not clear enough to be understood without checking the hint system for reassurance that I was on the right path. When I did go into the hint guide, I found that the hints either didn't provide me any information I didn't already know, or gave away the answer in full. There didn't seem to be any middle ground for those "I'm half way there, but I need a push" kind of hints - you either get the whole solution or barely any help at all. Sadly, even after reading the spoilers in the hint guide, I often found myself thinking "but that's what I was doing!" or "how did they expect me to figure that out?". In general, the puzzles were either pretty cool or impossibly frustrating. Just a small handful of puzzles fell into the "just right" category, where I felt challenged but not utterly confounded. And then, in the end, the game just sort of... ended. Unlike some of the previous games in the series, there wasn't any sort of cool 'payoff' or reward for reaching the end... there wasn't even a cliffhanger for the next installment. They just sort of tied up the loose ends and left it. Weak. Overall, I'd say that Myst: Revelation is a technical marvel that should be played, if only for the eye candy and sound design. As for the gameplay, Myst fans will probably get into it, and people who don't mind going for the hint guide a lot will probably like it, but if you want to play a game that you can really feel satisfied with figuring out all by yourself, this one may prove more annoying than fun. The designers just didn't make the path clear enough for the majority of the game, and while the surface shines like a diamond, the substance underneath retains a bit too much coal.