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The 11th Hour is all of the worst aspects of The 7th Guest, amplified. Where Myst and, more so, Riven create a logically-balanced world to comprehend and explore, these games give you lots of bad FMV, very arbitrary riddles (suddenly throwing in an anagram in the center of the second riddle you’re given, right near the beginning, for instance), and random puzzles which impede progress, not even a hint of context, half the time, provided as to what the point/goal is (that is, no context even within the puzzle itself, after careful and lengthy analysis) — the only way to solve several puzzles is to whack around, hoping to crack them by force. The end result of the expended effort is to, again, allow the player to, say, examine a table or open an otherwise-unblocked — or even partially open — door in a hallway on the other end of the house. Right.

I really hate this type of game design. It’s unimaginative, shallow, lazy, and just plain poor. Myst had a few “puzzles” in it, but, with only very few exceptions, the game effectively told you what to do if you merely read everything carefully and added up, analytically, everything you experienced, interrelating as much as possible. Riven was a vast step up in that it didn’t contain any of those sort of artificial roadblocks. Every difficulty in the game was based in the structure of the place. If the player couldn’t get past something or if he couldn’t figure out what the purpose was of a certain device or item or bit of architecture or writing, there was a completely rational, logical reason why not — he was an outsider, stepping into someone else’s world, filled with a culture he didn’t recognize, devices he had never used, and geography alien to him. Given enough study of his surroundings and a bit of insight, it was perfectly simple to deduce how things were, why they logically were the way they were, and, by relation, how to manage that which was encountered.

The 11th Hour is not like this in any respect. It is not for the thinker; it is for the sadomasochist and the game designers’ egos. “Hah — see anybody figure THIS out. Aren’t we clever?” It’s not clever to simply withhold every speck of information and player control within normal gameplay.

I suppose that’s the real difference between the serieses — Myst/Riven (with, as stated, a few exceptions in the first game) is based upon giving the player as much information as possible but no overt connecting threads. The player is mostly set free to explore, as the point is to internalize and interweave information until an overall comprehension is achieved. Guided understanding is more important than precise methodology. 7/11 is based upon almost the opposite concept; that series gives nothing but connecting threads. All information has to be conjured up in speculation, based upon these often completely baseless clues. The player is mostly confined, in fear that he encounter too much information and spoil the puzzles. Method is more important than comprehension.

I find this general kind of mindset to, frankly, be a combination of sad and injust. It masquerades as a test of brain power, when it more accurately a test of obedience. (I’ll not bother meticulating why this is — I’ve provided the data.) Whereas Myst and Riven compell the question “why,” The 7th Guest and 11th Hour compell the question “what?” It’s shallow and manipulative. Never trust he who actively hides his intentions.

I keep seeing everywhere — in reviews for Riven — that the game is supposed to be impossible to play without a walkthrough. Everything I’ve ever read on the game instructs the reader to find a hint book or walkthrough, as the game is, otherwise, too difficult and frustrating to play. The game isn’t made to be played on one’s own ability.

What the hell? Riven’s not a difficult game. All you need is a small amount of patience and the capacity to think. It can become frustrating, yes, but that’s a part of the whole point of the thing. You’re supposed to find and follow the game’s inner logic — and not very complex logic, at that. How hard is it to realize if two objects are shaped in the same, uncommon way that they probably are somehow related? To follow tubes and turn valves to change the flow of steam? There were only two or three small things in the entire game which seriously stumped me, and those were completely my own fault; I just didn’t see something relatively obvious.

Myst, while a little easier, was a little less obvious about things, and, as such, was more annoying to play. Riven is streamlined to the point where, given a couple of weeks and some quiet time alone, a person of average intellect should have little trouble completing it. All you have to do is, to a very small extent, think. I mean, I know how some games can drive a person nuts by their complete lack of logic or near-impossible (and irrelevant) puzzles, but Riven isn’t that way at all. It has a total of one or two “puzzles” in the entire game, if you could call them that; those are solved basically just by being thorough and exploring until enough data has been collected that connections can be made and some picture begins to form.

I mean, really. The typical excuse is “well, I don’t want to spend my life playing a game — I just want to walk around and have fun.” Look — anyone who says that is completely missing the point. If you don’t have any patience and aren’t willing to think, you shouldn’t be playing a game like Riven. It’s not a hard game, but it’s not made for bumble-minded brats. That’s why they make Doom clones. Go net-play or something. If you’re going to play a game, play the fucking game. If you want to turn off clipping, fly, and shoot things, they make these games — play them. Have your fun.

Myst:

Okay — done. It works fine in win98. I’ve not bothered looking at all of the endings, though. Myst is a much easier game than is Riven, though I did end up turning tail to a hint page because of stupid blunders and oversights on my part. Here they were, in total:

1 — somehow, it never dawned on me that one could walk behind the elevator shaft in the rotating tower on Myst island — a somewhat big oversight, and the same kind of problem I had that one time in Riven. Actually, I do remember walking back there when I was playing the game long, long ago, but I only remember this now, after the fact.

2 — I was a little too jumpy. I had the time and numbers for the clock code on Myst Island, again, written down, I knew that the clock was probably tied to the gears, and I knew it was the last puzzle on the island. I had been trying to figure out what was the correct time to which to set the clock ever since I saw the damned thing the for the first time, but, for whatever reason, something in my brain didn’t click for a few moments and I went back to the hint guide prematurely. The dumb thing is, I actually knew what I was looking up; I knew where to rotate the tower — my brain was just fuzzy.

3 — I scoured Channelwood about eight times over, trying to figure out how the hell to get onto the spiral staircase and how to operate the elevator right next to it, knowing that the two were probably intertwined. I also couldn’t find the red and blue pages in that age and knew they were probably on the upper-upper level which I couldn’t get to without using the staircase. blah, blah. Ends up that, somewhere in that mess of huts on the upper level, there was a lever which opened the door/gate which had been blocking my way. I walked by it (the lever) a hundred times, and I would have walked by it a hundred more. There’s no possible way I would ever have seen the lever, no matter what state of mind I might have been in. I was supposed to spot one unnotable stick amongst thousands and know it to be of signifigance?

4 — I did, early in my progress, notice the left half of the note which told how to obtain the final page of Atrus’ Myst linking book, but didn’t immediately know what it was and told myself to remember it for later, knowing I’d come across the second half at some point in the future. Ends up the second half was in Channelwood — in a drawer under a bed in the same location as the red and blue pages. I was just so annoyed and impatient about not seeing the previously-mentioned lever that I walked right by the note, grabbing the pages and getting out of there in frustration. I’d wasted enough time in that place. If the lever were more obvious or I’d otherwise just seen the damned thing in the first place, I’d have been more cautious, as I usually am. But I was irritated and I ran in and out, barely looking at anything. Later, when Atrus told me to find the missing white page to his book, I had no clue what to do. I thought it was dreadfully unfair of the game to just randomly tell me to find something which could be anywhere in the game with no clues at all. By this time, I’d been irritated enough that I forgot all about the half-note I made sure to remember for later. So, after dinking around and pouting for a while, I looked up the hint guide once again. Oh. That’s right — the note. Oh. Channelwood? Sigh. And it was in the one room in the game which I didn’t scour mercilessly.

Anyway, I think those were pretty reasonable hints I took; mostly my own fault and (with the exception of the frustration-related blunders) basically the same mistakes I made in Riven. Thing is, in Riven there were about five ways to do everything, so when I overlooked a few details, the game just made it a bit more difficult for me rather than blocking progress completely.

The ending of Myst is. . .well, strange. After Playing Riven, it’s a perfect intro to the second game, and it doesn’t annoy me very much because I know what comes next. I can imagine, however, if Riven didn’t exist or I’d never played it, that the ending could be disappointing, as I’d heard it rather was.