The I.T Massive!

iPhone Used: iPhone 3GS (OS Version 3.1)
Category: Games
App Author: Cyan Worlds Inc.
Release Date: 04 May 2009
Version: 1.1.5
App Price: £3.49
App Size: 533MB

Click here to see iTunes Page

Introduction

Myst is an adventure game that you move about the island areas exploring different worlds known as ages. The game operates on changing pre-rendered stills and by touching the screen in the direction you wish to travel changes the stills. You play as an unnamed character and you quickly learn of Atrus, an explorer that you must help.

App Size

The original release on the iPhone was around 720 MB and a smaller version was released to bring down the size to around 530 MB which can take a long time to download and take up a lot of space on congested devices. The App is however a full game that will provide many hours of entertainment and mind puzzles.

Interface

The touch interface on the iPhone suffers from a small flaw for people with large fingers like me that can't easily hit some of the smaller areas. While for people with skinny fingers this is not generally a problem. However the touch interface generally works well allowing you to move around easily. Touching an area on the screen normally does what you think it will do.

Sound

Sometimes the loud background sounds can interfere with the sounds in the foreground that you really want to hear. The background sounds can't be turned down independently from the main sound which would help solve this problem. At some parts of the game sounds are important and being unable to hear things properly severely impacts on the gaming experience, headphones are recommended.

Options Screen

To get to the options screen there is an icon in the bottom right corner, simply touching this will bring you to the screen below. As this is the only icon on the screen while playing the game it really helps to draw you into the fantasy world. The options screen is well laid out which allows you access to the save system, the volume and the transition speed sliders. The other options include the Help/info and the Hint guide.

The Sound Volume slider changes the volume of the game. The transition speed slider changes how fast the game moves from screen to screen, this is purely personal preference.

The options icon switch will allow you to disable/enable showing the icon in the corner of the screen but touching the same area will bring you back to the options screen as normal.

Help/Info

This menu has information related to the game, it's features and most importantly access to the starting guide.

Getting Started

A very good getting started guide has been written for this version of the game to help you use the features of the the iPhone (like taking screen shots) as well as telling you how to interact with the touch interface. Reading this guide before playing the game is highly recommended for a new player to this game as there is no tutorial level.

Hint Guide

The hint guide is written in an excellent manner so it never gives away too much information at once, if you want to know more you can drill down into a more detailed answer. The guide is split up into sections that relate to each area in the game so you can easily navigate around the guide.

Save System

This version of the game contains 4 save slots called bookmarks that can be used to save the game state and change between saved games. The game on the iPhone version also has an auto save feature that saves the game when exiting the game to the iPhone App screen or when you receive a call so you can go back to where you left off easily.

Conclusion

The game is long for an iPhone being four hours worth of game time with the help of an old Myst pro and using the in-game hints (which are very useful). Naturally for a new player unfamiliar with Myst and wanting to figure everything out for themselves the game would last much longer than four hours.

The game looks amazing on the iPhone, the improved image quality from the original game helps bring the game more inline with the up-to-date graphics that we are used to looking at. The different areas each have there own unique themes which are executed well with the different imagery and sounds effects.

I wanted to play this game for replaying a bit of the past and the transition to the modern device like the iPhone was done very well. If you played the original game and are looking for some fun on your iPhone this is one to get, if not it's a good puzzle game that will keep your mind busy for a good while.

Score: 8/10

Buy, Yea or Nay?: Yea