Summary: 65/100

Introduction

Exile is a first-person 3D adventure/puzzle game. It's the third game in the Myst series, following the first sequel, Riven. Exile is distinguished from many popular games as much by what it lacks as by what it contains: there are no weapons, there is no killing, and you don't have to master any tricky timing, jumping, or other tasks requiring reflex skills. The basic idea is that you move at your own pace through a series of beautifully-produced 3D environments, solving a series of logic puzzles along the way. There are few explicit instructions: the point of the game is to discover both what needs to be done and how to do it.

The Review

"I need some brave boys and girls who like to push buttons;
adventurers like YOU!" -- The Firesign Theatre

Let's start with the good stuff. Exile is visually and acoustically stunning. The production values are the best I've seen in any game on any platform. To play the game, you move from one location to another by clicking where you want to go. Between movements you are free to look up, down, and around in all directions. You make things happen in the game by clicking on visible objects and then manipulating them.

Exile takes place in several different 3D worlds. The modeling, texturing, and lighting are simply superb and set a new standard for games. The sounds are very good, and the music almost always complements and enhances the game. The game has hundreds of beautifully-produced short animated sequences that fit seamlessly into the environment, and show everything from unfolding flowers to the operation of weird mechanical gizmos.

Now on to the bad stuff: The description above is really all there is to the game. You basically wander from place to place, identify little self-contained logic puzzles, and solve them. There is a thin thread of story to give some explanation for why these puzzles exist, but it doesn't affect how or why you do anything in the game. Some of the puzzles are very clever and integrated into the world, but some are blunt and brutally bolted-on (in the latter category are useless but complicated machines with unlabeled control panels; you solve the puzzle by correctly programming the machine). Most of the puzzles are about 2D and 3D spatial logic and sequencing, e.g. push this switch to lower that bridge to turn off that light so you can enter that door which you saw from the bridge. Many puzzles explicitly contain a mechanical apparatus in the form of gears, levers, buttons, etc. In other places, the gadgets are not immediately recognizable, but still serve familiar purposes.

Although the world is rendered in great detail, your presence is non-existent: as you move through the environment you do not cast shadows, leave footsteps, rustle branches, or otherwise affect the world. However, you do solve puzzles by picking things up and moving them around, and there are several times where the game basically tells you that you're an adult-sized person with normal weight and visibility. This lack of physical presence was usually easy to overlook, except when the game itself violated the convention.

I'm always on the lookout for anything like a story or characters in today's games. Exile contains one character - the angry villain - that appears in a sequence of film clips, basically to remind you how angry he is. You also pick up pages of his journal that explains why he's angry. He doesn't change over the course of the game: he starts angry and ends the same way. We see Atrus and his wife very briefly. There is basically no story, except for the setup. So on the story/character side, this game gets 5 points out of 100.

I always play games with a hint book by my side, to which I turn when my frustration exceeds my pleasure. The Prima Games hint book contains an explicit step-by-step walkthrough, as well as a section called "soft hints" intended to gently nudge you towards a solution. I found that the soft hints gave away far too much context and revealed future surprises. The most fun and productive way to play the game was to proceed on my own resources until I got stuck, then consult the walkthrough and execute the next required action to get going again.

Comparison to Myst and Riven

Technologically, Exile is superior to its predecessors (and its competitors). While I thought that the art direction in Riven was more inspired, Exile was more accomplished. Despite its 4-CD size, Exile is a much faster play than Myst or Riven. I finished the game in about 12 unpressured hours, spread over three evenings.

Conclusion

Exile is to Myst what Rocky V was to Rocky: much more of the same.

Exile looks and sounds beautiful, but in the end it's pointless: the world of Exile is sterile. There are lots of objects in the world, but no people to interact with. There are lots of things to manipulate, but no reason to manipulate them. If your idea of fun is navigating through a foreign airport where you don't speak the language, assembling a bicycle without instructions, or debugging computer programs, then this is the game for you.

Final score: 65 out of 100