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Mar 4th, 2014 at 21:44:33 - Myst (PC) |
Myst was originally released in 1993. In early 2000 Myst: Masterpiece Edition
(the version I played) was released and is the same game except for all the images being updated from 8-bit color to 24-bit truecolor and the sound was given an upgrade. Myst is a point-and-click puzzle adventure game which spans five areas (four of which are known as "Ages" and the final being the hub island called "Myst Island"). You begin on Myst Island with no direction and have to navigate your way to and from the four ages, collecting red or blue (or both) pages and adding them to their respective books on "Myst Island." The game has three endings essentially: you complete the red book, you complete the blue book, or you find the hidden page on "Myst Island" and open the secret book.
The game is filled with puzzles which you must solve in order to progress. Each age is accessed by solving the puzzle which opens up the location of the "linking book" of each respective "Age." For example, the "Stoneship Age" is accessed by raising the small ship in the fountain in the middle of the island so that it is floating on the water in the fountain. Once you do that the life-sized ship located where you originally began the game is also raised and you can enter it and use its "linking book."
*** Session 1: ***
Sometime in the early 2000s I was able to finally piece together all of the puzzles in Myst: Masterpiece Edition and complete it for the first time. This first session was the first time I had played it since then since my CD copy of the game didn't work on any operating systems past Windows 98. I found a legally-obtainable working copy online (thank you, gog.com) and eagerly purchased it.
Since this was the first time I had played the game in almost fifteen years I had quite a bit of trouble remembering the puzzles of the game. I remembered vague things which helped lead me to solving each puzzle, but I had completely forgotten every single puzzle in each Age. This caused me to get stuck quite a few times. In this session I was trying to collect all the pages so I could make my decision about which ending I wanted to see right at the end, but only a few minutes from the end the game crashed (because it still isn't fully compatible with Windows 7, but it works fine most of the time) and I lost a lot of progress so I ended up only collecting the red pages.
In the end I decided on the ending you get from finding the hidden page on "Myst Island" which was also the ending I chose when I first completed the game. Because of this I decided to get the other two endings at the same time in the second session.
*** Session 2: ***
After completing the game in the first session I wanted to give myself time to forget the puzzles I had just solved and I left the game alone for two days. However, that still wasn't enough time to forget the majority of the puzzles and so I was able to progress through the game much more quickly than in the first session (even though I was getting all of the pages).
This is the major negative point of the game. Since it is a puzzle game that doesn't have random puzzles you get the same experience every time you play. Even if you get each "Age's" pages in different orders the videos you get from the pages are still the same.
Since the game itself is a bunch of still images there are no true animations. The way animations were pulled off is actually pretty clever. Each time a portion of a scene is animated a video is spawned and played over the part of the scene which needs to be animated. One of the best ways this is accomplished is when you enter an elevator. Instead of playing a video of the door opening and closing the video is spawned in by swiping from one side of the screen so it gives the illusion of the door closing. It despawns by swiping in the opposite direction so it give the illusion of the door opening. That's one of the more clever design choices that stuck out to me particularly in this second session where I was less focused on solving the puzzles.
The two sessions combined took a few hours but it was well worth it, in my opinion, to be able to finally experience this game world again after all this time.
*** Conclusion: ***
The puzzles throughout Myst are solved through a series of complex steps which require memorization or just writing something down. This is why it is one of my favorite games of all time. The puzzles aren't extremely simple and require quite a bit of brainpower to solve, but they are also puzzles that can be solved through simple logic so they aren't impossible, though sometimes they might feel that way. The only problem I would have with the game is the same problem I have with most puzzle games: once you solve all of the puzzles there isn't much left to do in the game. Myst helps this a little bit by having three possible endings and a great story, but it is still a problem. There are also a couple of puzzles that aren't mind-bending as much as they are tedious. Overall I am still a huge fan of the game after all these years and even after having to sit through the most tedious puzzle in the game five times.
This entry has been edited 3 times. It was last edited on Mar 4th, 2014 at 21:46:54.
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Feb 10th, 2014 at 21:21:07 - Dominion (Other) |
For the non-video game analysis three members of our group from the three week game got together to play the deck-building game "Dominion." I had never before played a deck-building game, so it took a little while to learn the basic premise of the game.
*** Session 1: ***
Two of us had never played the game Dominion before and needed to be taught the rules. After that we both had to take a few minutes at the beginning of the session to familiarize ourselves with the cards in front of us so that we could devise a strategy going forward.
In Dominion the playing area is divided into three sections, not including the players' spaces. The first section of three sections contains three stacks of victory cards and one stack of curse cards, the second section contains three stacks of treasure cards, and the third section includes ten stacks of action cards. The victory card section includes a stack of estate cards which are worth one victory point each, a stack of duchy cards which are worth three victory points each, a stack of province cards which are worth 6 victory points each, and a stack of curse cards which are worth a single negative victory point each (we never used these because none of the action cards we used called for them). The treasure card section includes a stack of copper cards which are worth one coin each, a stack of silver cards which are worth two coins each, and a stack of gold cards which are worth three coins each. The action section contained any ten stacks of action cards (all the same for each stack) and these are different for every game.
At the beginning of the game each player is give a starting deck which contains seven copper cards and three estate cards and everyone draws five random cards from their deck. During each player's individual turn he has a single action and a single purchase available to him. An action allows the use of action cards and a purchase allows the player to buy a single card worth no more than the total amount of coin in his hand during that turn. At the end of each turn the player discards his hand and draws five new cards. This continues until every province has been purchased (there are twelve total) or any three of the other stacks have been depleted.
The first game went well for me thanks to the action cards available. I went for a strategy that called for getting as my high value treasure cards as quickly as possible and thanks to that I came in second only one victory point the only person who had played the game before. Having done so well I was hopeful for the outcome of the second game.
*** Session 2: ***
Each time a new game begins a new set of ten actions cards is chosen, whether at random or with some purpose. This is the one weakness I identified in the game. Since our cards were chosen at random it meant that there was a good chance that some of the cards wouldn't complement each other or a certain strategy. There is also a problem in choosing the cards deliberately each time because you will constantly be playing similar games in different sessions.
In the second game one of the action cards that was available was the "Thief" card. This card allowed the player who played it to steal every other player's high value treasure cards if they were within the top two cards of each players' decks and it discarded the cards that weren't taken. Thanks to this card my strategy of getting as much treasure as quickly as possible was rendered useless and by the time I tried to also use the thief it was too late and I lost by a sizable margin.
*** Conclusion: ***
Overall I really enjoyed the game. My only gripe was the choice of having ten stacks of action cards. If those cards could have been more uniform in the way they were chosen or the way the overall selection of action cards was balanced then I believe it would be better. I would definitely play this game again, if given the chance, and I would recommend it to everyone. I would just like to recommend that action card stacks are chosen with a sense of direction.
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