Myst III: Exile, or, They Just Don’t Mak // VOID-STAR.NET

Either I’m getting a lot smarter, or computer games are getting a lot (and that’s a lot) easier. I bought Myst III: Exile the other day, and managed to whip through an Age about every 18 hours or so. For me, this is a big achievment, since I own the hint books to just about every single game I ever bought. My theory is that a game’s just no good if you don’t need to cheat. The first game I managed to breeze through without hints was Zork: Grand Inquisitor, and shortly after that, Grim Fandango (two really awesome games, by the way). Riven required practically a whole damn library of hint books for me to finish, and now comes Myst III, which is a piece of cake. I actually went out today and got a cheat for the Edanna (spelling?) Age just so I didn’t feel I was wasting my $90. Stupid mushroom plants… what fuckin’ mushroom plant? Anyway…

See, I think it’s games. Like TV and books, computer games are just getting dumber every year. The reason I think this is because the one game I can’t solve, no matter how hard I try, is Adventure — a text-only Unix based game written about 20 or 30 years ago. Now those were the days when a sense of humour, a big green snake and a magic word were all you needed. None of this fancy schmancy graphics-no-game things they’re churning out nowadays. Sigh. Give me a game I can’t complete, damnit!