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Green Myste By Rusty Axe Games, Price: $24.99
Reviewed March, 2004 By Howard Paw

Every possible game genre on the Pocket PC has been appropriately filled with the onslaught of new and talented developers, from the mediocre card games to the mind blowing action games, there is no shortage of games on each genre, all except for the RPG and Adventure genre. For people like me who grew up on games like Ultima, Pocket PC gaming was somewhat disappointing, but someone must have heard my cries of agony as I found a game that might fill the void, enter Green Myste.

The player starts the game with a short introduction of one of the NPCs giving you the charge of saving the main characters home city, the player character has no choice but the accept the mission (heck, if he didn't, there'd be no game to play now would it?) Once inside the city, the game begins in earnest with the player striking up conversations with the various villagers so he can learn more about whatever enemies he'll eventually end up going toe to toe with. There are no character classes to choose from, but the player will have the chance to ally with various classes of NPCs like a Fighter, Thief and Mage. As with every RPG and adventure game, exploration and dialogue will be a major part of the game,

Average is what I would rate the quality of the graphics found in Green Myste, its look and style is quite reminiscent of the old Ultima games from the dawn of PC gaming, it may look quite cool back then but looks severely outdated in today's standards, but I still liked the graphic despite of it looking somewhat "old" appearance. Average is what I would also rate the quality of the in game animation, the 3D environment is done quite well as the background scales appropriately as you walk around, but the enemies' animation seems kind of jerky and makes the game looks less polished than it already is. Of course this isn't that much of a big deal, but I would have enjoyed the game better if the animations were smoother.

Controls are done via the use of hardware buttons, you use the D-Pad to control movements and the other four buttons to access the menu and do actions like pick up items or attack enemies, the use of a stylus is completely unnecessary as Green Myste is played by exclusively using only the hardware buttons, and here is where I see a major flaw. As much as I love the idea of controls via the hardware button (like a Gameboy), the developers should have kept in mind that the Pocket PC is nowhere similar to a GameBoy as far as hardware buttons are concerned. The D-pad of the GameBoy was made with gaming in mind thus its buttons are made of plastic that is soft on the fingers, the Pocket PC's buttons on the other hand are hard and can actually hurt your thumbs with prolonged use. I played Green Myste on an iPAQ 1940 and 4150 and both PDA managed to hurt my thumbs in around 30 minutes of game time (The iPAQ 1940 was more worse in this regard as its D-pad is much harder to press). It also takes a lot of button presses to cycle through the menus, dialogue and action commands, an ideal control method would have been a combination of hardware AND stylus taps, something like moving via the D Pad and selecting an item or attacking an enemy via stylus taps.

Other than the control and animation issues, I had a good time playing Green Myste; this is one game that any fans of RPG and Adventure genre would totally enjoy. The storyline may be a bit bland and all of the characters in the game have personalities akin to a beanbag, but still, this game still has this strange appeal to it and I found myself drawn to it from time to time.

This game is available for Pocket PCs and the Tapwave Zodiac.