Rating: 
Summary: Great games - Poor collection
Review: I've got a lot of fond memories of playing Myst and Riven, so it was great to go back and play them again. Unfortunately, this new collection's benefits are far outweighed by its massive flaws. It's great to get three spectacular games for a relatively low price, and thanks to DVD, disc swapping is a thing of the past. That's about all the nice things I can say about it though. The package boasts full Win XP compatibility, but at the cost of functionality with anything else, sans Win 98 for some unfathomable reason. (Why skip 2000?) Furthermore, only Myst 3 seems to work perfectly. Myst and Riven are plagued with bugs and video card incompatibilities. The best part is that a lot of the bugs are addressed in the readme files with solutions such as "turn transitions off until you pass the trouble spot, then reactivate." So they new about a lot of these problems, but did nothing. Great quality control.
So if you love Myst, have Win XP, a DVD drive, a newish video card with up to date drivers, and a lot of patience, then by all means buy this. Otherwise, dig out your old copies and live with switching discs.
Rating: 
Summary: The Myst Anniverary Collection
Review: I've read about 200 reviews on this game over the years and not one of them gets the point on what this game is about. It's hide and seek and nothing more. This is not a puzzle. It's a series a keyboard strokes that you need a guide book for. There is no way to solve any of these Myst games without a guide book unless you're lucky. It's the same philosophy here as with so many games as presenting an old shoe box to someone with something inside and asking someone to guess first what's inside without first opening the lid. The solution is easy for the presenter though almost impossible for the guesser. The biggest difference between Myst games and a shoe box is the visual graphics. It's not really a matter of intelligence to solve the game though having a patient mind helps. I've solved Myst and Riven with my guide books. Why don't the programmers simply enter a hint menu for each situation? So many players get caught up with solving any game on the programmer's terms or they think they have to solve the game on there own in the name of fun. Wrong. A hint menu would be so much better than thinking about delusion of grandeur. And every game on the market should have numerous starting points to play the game at the different levels at your own choosing without thinking of the programmer's wishes. Delusion of grandeur is such a monetary factor with gamers. Why can't they design games on my terms, not yours? And progressive is a rip off. I bought the game so give me access to it anywhere in the game anytime if I so choose to go there. Thanks UBI for the free Myst 1V Revelation screen saver download and I have the Cedco Riven screensaver pictures in a folder. UBI, I do like your new Chessmater 10.
Rating:
Summary: This is Not a Typical Game
Review: If you are like me -- if you are someone who really does not get into computer games much because they rarely engage you beyond the first couple of hours -- Myst is a very pleasant surprise. Like many people, I am disgusted by the grotesque or mind-numbing nature of most of the games you see for computers and in arcades. Myst is a game that I think is attractive to readers and gamers who like more contemplative entertainment, and (this is just a guess) it probably attracts those of us who enjoy playing games like chess or Scrabble on a computer. This game takes more patience, it requires you to really use your reasoning abilities, even to get out a pad and pencil to sketch courses of action. It is not about instant gratification (blowing away your enemy) but rather, it is about entering a sort of fantasy world and trying to figure out why things look and act the way they do, then acting on your hypotheses. Each time you do uncover one of the answers (and I don't want to give any of them away here) you are rewarded by gaining access to a whole new realm of mysteries that is more complex than the previous one. Along the way, the music and the images border on the edge of mystery, and sometimes even horror. But it is an implied horror, something you sense rather than something thrown at you, and the game never crosses the line into tastelessness. It's one of the very few games I have ever tried where, hours after I shut down the computer, I got an insight into how to go about a particular strategy, and then I wanted to get back into it and see if my idea worked. How often do video games cause that reaction in players?Once you have "won" the game, there is nothing new to experience. However, it will take you a good while to get there. If you compare this to other entertainments, for example, going out to movies, you realize that the hours you'll spend on the game, even if it does have an "ending," are well worth the price. Even after "winning," it is interesting once in a while to go back into the game just to take a look at the images again.
Rating: 
Summary: Myst is very buggy.
Review: Lots of crashes in Myst. The troubleshooting suggestions offered by Ubisoft are silly. (Make sure you have at least 24-bit graphics selected.) I solved my first crash after about an hour of trying different things. As it turned out, the latest version of Quicktime (v6.5.1) causes a hologram projection device to crash. Removing Quicktime v6.5.1 and installing v6.3 from the DVD fixed that crash. I've spent about an hour on my next crash with no luck.
When you consider how long ago Myst was released as well as how long this DVD collection was released, it's really pretty amazing how poor the quality is. There is no patch available and no useful information in the online FAQ.
As far as the game itself goes, Myst certainly looks dated. It's not a bad game, but I would agree with a previous reviewer's comments that suggest you need to use the hints to solve the game. There have been a few occasions in which you need to click on just the right spot on some rather poor graphics to open a secret door. I enjoy trying to think through the more logical puzzles, but I really don't have the patience to blindly click on every spot on a screen hoping to find a secret door. I haven't bothered trying Riven or Exile yet since I haven't completed Myst, so I can't comment on them.
Bottom line: spend your $20 on something else.
Regards,
Greg
Rating:
Summary: Two great games for a great price
Review: So far I've only played Myst and Riven so those are the only two that I'm writing about. I've been playing adventure games for about five years but I never got around to playing Myst or Riven. I think I tried playing both a few years ago but I guess they didn't interest me at the time and I pretty much quit before I got started. So when I saw the Myst 10th Anniversary DVD, which included three games, I thought "What the heck." Unfortunately, I bought the games before coming to amazon.com to read everyone else's reviews. Once I did, I realized that all the crashes that were occuring when I tried to play Myst were not unique. I, too, took the listed system requirements on the box to be accurate - obviously not a good idea. Fortunately, I have a laptop with Windows Me and even though this OS isn't mentioned in the system requirements, Myst and Riven played fine. However, I know I missed a lot regarding visuals since I have a much better video card on my PC.
Anyway...I found Myst to be an entertaining game of medium difficulty. I wasn't playing games when Myst came out in the early 90s so but I've heard about what a gaming breakthrough it was at the time. The graphics certainly pale when compared to games of today (Syberia, etc.). Even so, the puzzles are challenging enough to still make the game interesting and I enjoyed playing it.
However, Riven is a whole other story. The graphics are much better but this game is HARD. There are about the same number of "worlds" to explore but they are much more detailed and there is so much to do. The puzzles are more complex requiring more steps that might are not all be located in the same place. You might have to turn a switch in one place, then go half way across the "world" to push a button and go somewhere else to complete the action. I think that anyone who can play this game without getting hints from a walkthrough must be a darn good player (a heck of a lot better than me). I don't know if I could say I 'enjoyed' playing Riven but after finally finishing the game, I felt exhausted (as though I were the one physically travelling from one world to another), but I also felt a sense of accomplishment.
I would definitely recommend both games. But as other reviews pointed out, if your computer's OS is Windows XP, and you do not have access to an earlier Window's OS version, then you're outta luck. On to Myst III!
Rating: 
Summary: Great game, but there are technical issues
Review: The game is beutiful - especially that it was created some 10 years ago - but sometimes crashes. The support was somewhat helpful - while not being able to resolve actual crash issues, they offered to get me past the troublesome spots.
Rating: 
Summary: Not fully XP compatible
Review: The Myst series are such beautiful games and I was so excited that they were released on DVD specifically for XP. The excitement lasted about 15 minutes into my first playing. . . Despite the fact that it is supposed to be made for XP, I am still experiencing a LOT of trouble running it. In several different places in Myst, it crashes to desktop--bad thing when those places are pertinent to solving! As of this date, 16 May 2004, there is STILL no patch availble, or any signs that UbiSoft is working on the problem.
Rating:
Summary: Genius, Innovation, Quality
Review: The original Myst, Riven: The Sequel To Myst, and somewhat to a lesser degree Myst III: Exile, are gaming masterpieces that stand the test of Time for genius, innovation, and quality. The Myst series is a unique and satisfying experience unlike the banality and repetition found in most video games. I highly recommend the series to anyone who enjoys exploration of the extraordinary, adventure into the unkown, and the solving of challenging, subtle, and well-integrated environmental puzzles. Repolished on a 3-disc DVD set, this series is essential for everyone's gaming library!
Rating:
Summary: This Game is Broken on Windows XP
Review: The Riven DVD crashes at specific points in the game with no way to get past these points at all. I reported the issue to Ubisoft and they said that it's a known issue and they're working on a patch. They closed my support ticket thanking me for being understanding. I'm not understanding. Who knows when I'll actually be able to play. I'm really disappointed that I spent my money on this.
Rating:
Summary: Hard, but worth the big $$$
Review: This game is fun, when able to play. Has compatibility issues with Windows XP, also serious issues with Quicktime. If you want to play this game, uninstall your current version on Quicktime and install the version that comes with the discs.
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