Reviews: Silence, Larry, Myst IV

Written by Marek Bronstring — November 18, 2004 at 18:48

PlayXcess bestowed a score 8/10 to The Moment Of Silence, citing its sensibly intelligent puzzle designs and deft handling of mature themes:

"MoS is not only a multi-faceted adventure game in its own right; it is also a mature and compelling tale; woven with first-rate narrative and an intricate plot that works slowly, like an insidious drug, and enthrals you. Wide in scope, dark in vision and sharp in application; MoS is a mandatory purchase for adventure enthusiasts, and a worthy consideration for any devotee of sci-fi. There is nothing to be ashamed of; MoS will make it socially acceptable to enjoy adventure games."

At Game Archive it also received an 8/10, partly for its high production value, solid voice acting, and sound design:

"Top quality aesthetics have been a staple of this genre since the beginning of the 90’s, and this tradition is continued to great effect here. The voice acting throughout is of the utmost quality the whole way through. Each characters fits their personality and appearance quite perfectly, another piece of praise for House Of Tales. Special mention too has to go to the music, which again only helps create the tension filled atmosphere that the game craves. Visual wise everything is of a high standard, especially the different character models. It’s not quite up there with the Chronicles of Riddick of this world, but it’s not too huge a step behind. Plus it doesn’t need a monster PC to run at a fair old pace. The review for this game was a 1GHz Athlon with 512Mb RAM, and ran with no problems whatsoever. And since that’s considered to be quite behind the times, not many of you would have any problems. However, the game does come on DVD only, so it’s now time to invest in a DVD drive for your PC if you don’t already have one. It’s worth the quality of voice acting alone."

Meanwhile, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude came out with a score of 9.0/10 at Game Chronicles:

"For those of you who are deriding this game as nothing but sexual objectification of women and toilet humor I have this to say: Duh! What were you guys expecting but some “lowbrow” humor and boobies? That’s what it bills itself as."

Finally, over at Gamesradar, Myst IV: Revelation petered out with a score of 45/100% for being...

"Slow, tiresome and, fundamentally, a bit broken...you find yourself fighting against the flick-screen motion. While the locations are built as 3D space, you're only allowed to move to fixed positions within them - you don't have total fluidity of motion. This causes immense headaches, destroying your sense of spatial awareness. When puzzles rely on the geometry of the world, you need to know north from south, up from down. When you don't understand how these spaces fit together, the illusion falls apart."