Myst may have fogged my memmories, but...

Our memories are often sweeter than the reality they reflect. And though I am tickled to see this revival of Myst, it is (by some difficult to quantify measure) not quite what I recall of the original experience, at least not as it appeared on my long-ago Windows machine.

As mentioned elsewhere in these reviews, the quality of the graphics doesn’t appear to be on par with the olden version. But is that even possible? Or is it just memory (mine, not my MacBook Pro’s) playing tricks on me?

At the very least (and what with the benefit of Cyan’s software re-optimization, and the oomph our newer hardware) I would have expected a richer-than-original experience. Yes, in fairness, this release does introduce new capabilities. I’m just not convinced that they’re improvements.

By tinkering with the advanced settings, turning off some of the water-effects and the like, and by opting to play in the traditional point-click fashion, I can reclaim much of the classic flavor of Myst—much but (and it’s back to that hard to quantify stuff) not all.

Perhaps this really is what it looked like—with hints of aliasing and a coarseness which I simply overlooked back in the day because, well, Myst was such a wickedly novel form of entertainment.

Are you wondering whether you should splurge? If you’ve never ventured into the world of Myst, by all means this is a fine enough way to do so; but if you’re an ancient explorer like me, sadly, you may find yourself crawling down the road to Weltschmerz.

ZeligSmith about realMyst: Masterpiece Edition