realMyst Masterpiece Edition Review

realMyst gets remastered again as a masterpiece. What? Exactly. Myst is a definitive game that hardly needs an introduction, but here’s one anyway for those people that had a life outside of their computer for the last twenty years: Myst is a graphic adventure puzzle game developed by brothers Robyn and Rand Miller under the company Cyan (now Cyan Worlds). It put the player in the role of ‘Stranger’ who has presumably ship-wrecked himself on a desert island. The game follows the plight of two men trapped inside ‘linked books’, and the player has the task of finding the missing pages of each book and bringing them back to Myst island in order to complete the game.

realMyst Masterpiece Edition - Nothing New to See Here

realMyst: Masterpiece Edition is essentially an artistic redrafting of the original hit. The third remastering of the original classic (the first two being Myst: Masterpiece Edition and realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition), this edition had quite the legacy to live up to. Graphically, the franchise does not disappoint; the graphics and visual effects of the new release are just stunning. The game also features much more depth through the innovative use of shadowing and shaders, which add real verisimilitude to the game

This said it was a shame to see that nothing new had been added to the game. It still featured the additional Age, Rime, that was added in realMyst, as well as the additional weather and sound effects, but that’s about it. As nice as it is to see my 30” high-spec monitor put to the test, this game does not deliver even one piece of new gameplay. The player can even switch back to the original, static click-travel gameplay of the original Myst, which was ditched in later remakes for smoother, more explorative 3D movement.

realMyst Masterpiece Edition - The Verdict

The latest remake of a remake of… well, a remake is exactly that. Fans of the franchise will love being able to rediscover the beautiful and intricate island of Myst, whereas the up-to-date graphics should attract a whole new clique of players to the game. But for those of you that have played Myst or its updates before and hated it, there’s nothing new for you here.