Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Total letdown"

Without question, Myst helped usher computer entertainment as a work of interactive art. There was simply nothing else quite like it. So, you would think porting it to a system like the Nintendo DS would be a spot-on idea with its stylus functionality and touch screens. In practice, Myst for the DS is a complete and utter failure due to numerous graphical inconsistencies, unresponsive stylus controls and interface issues.

The graphics don't hold up very well on the DS' resolution. A lot of the environments are grainy, making it harder to spot some of the more intimate visual clues like small switches and dials. The game does not offer the option to use the D-Pad so the hand cursor, which would have made it a lot easier for this port, is completely absent. The stylus is not as fun or as intuitive for playing Myst as you might think. First off, it is irritatingly unresponsive. You have to repeatedly tap on certain things like levers and even walking direction to get things moving along. And more often than not, you will end up walking in circles because the touch screen has trouble registering specific directions correctly; even with repeated taps from the stylus. This forces you to use a lot of trial-and-error when you want to move to a specific area, making what should be a pleasurable on-the-go exploration experience a frustrating nightmare.

The notepad feature is perhaps the most infuriating element of the game. Rather than simply scribbling notes on the touch screen like you could in most other DS games, Myst DS forces you to use a perplexing onscreen keyboard, which not only is overly cumbersome and unnecessary, but also unpleasant looking. If you want to take a snapshot of visual clues, the game allows you one snapshot at a time. With End of Ages, you were able to take as many as you needed--why a one-snapshot restriction was put in place here is beyond comprehension.

The DS port, however, did a decent job in getting all the FMV into the game. But it's far from perfect--the video is grainy and inplausible. All the voice work from the original game is here and intact, but they don't sound all that great through the DS' speakers. For best results, you might want to invest in some decent earphones. And, at the very least, the game provides you a magnifying glass for reading notes and journals--something of a compensatory measure to make up for its grainy graphics.

One of the key reasons why I even bothered to buy the thing was to try out the Rime Age, because I never got the chance to play RealMyst. To my dismay, the Rime Age ended up being as completely pointless as it was short and underwhelming, and certainly not worth the time and effort to get there.

I love the franchise and still do to this day, but Myst DS leaves much to be desired. By trying half-heartedly to bring one of the greatest computer games of all time to a portable format like the Nintendo DS, it ruins the original experience considerably--all good intentions considered. They could have tried harder to get it right. Until they do, don't waste your time or your money.