5 Responses to “Rhem 2 Reviews”

1. wysewomon says:

   February 15, 2010 at 3:26 pm

   Review by wysewomon for Rhem 2
   Rating:
   In _Rhem_, you wound your way through an immense complex of paths and machinery to retrieve the first piece of a mysterious key. In _Rhem 2_ you finally get to see where that key will take you-but only after you’ve found the rest of it, in an equally giant complex…underground.

   As you might guess, _Rhem 2_ resembles its predecessor in many ways. First of all, the plot is minimal. This is a first person game with virtually no character interaction; you see others only briefly and mostly as recorded images dispensing instructions. Second, navigating the complex is part of the challenge and many of the puzzles revolve around allowing you to navigate. Third, the puzzles are very intellectual, often having to do with math and electrical engineering as designed by a crazy person with a mind shaped like a mess of tangle extension cords. If you don’t like puzzles, or aren’t willing to devote a lot of time wandering around collecting information before anything substantial happens, this game is not for you.

   The game presents an odd combination of not-much-to-look-at and lots-to-look-at. As in _Rhem_, the graphics are pretty good but not stunning and the palette is fairly monochromatic (though there are different colours in different areas and the water is animated this time around). So sometimes it was hard to get excited about looking around. Yet close examination of the environment is essential, as information necessary to solving the puzzles is hidden all over the place. I found it a little too easy to stop looking everywhere and skip over things. It’s best to take this game in small doses so you don’t reach information and navigation overload quite as quickly.

   _Rhem 2_ essentially is divided into two parts: the search for the key, which allows you to access a deeper level of the underground complex, and the search for a “circular artifact” concealed in this deeper level. I enjoyed the first part quite a lot. It seemed about the right level of difficulty (medium-to-hard but solvable without recourse to a walkthrough) and the pace was good. The puzzles were spaced relatively close in plain distance and it was pretty easy to figure out what they did. The second part, however, became almost obscenely complicated. Part of this was due to the way all the puzzles were interconnected to the Nth degree; you could very rarely solve one without discovering you had to solve another, and yet another, before the ultimate answer was available. I generally like this kind of integrated puzzle, but _Rhem 2_ took the idea to extremes. I would have liked a few incidences of discrete gratification.

   Speaking of gratification, there wasn’t quite enough of it. Quite often in this game, you went through a huge process of information collection that required going back and forth through the gameworld numerous times, and when you finally solved the puzzle, all you got was a bell ringing. There might have been some other effect, but it was hard to tell just what that effect was. Did I open a door five miles away or power up something in the cavern below or what does that ringing bell indicate? A little more clarity and a little more flash would have been welcome. And it would have been nice had the writer provided more backstory, like the journals in the MYST games. They would have broken up some of the feeling of information overload and provided and idea why anyone would have built this huge place essentially for the purpose of powering up a few switches-something that was never explained at all.

   In the second part of the game, the puzzles got a little repetetive. Probably seventy-five percent of them had to do with getting power to go to one switch or another. Unfortunately, this meant tracing out the wiring paths in about a dozen different places-enough to make you go blind.

   Where the puzzles were good, they were REALLY good: the kind that make you feel really smart when you see the answer. However, I reached a point near the end of the game where I was just plain tired of running back and forth trying to find the clue for room X that was, for some reason, all the way back in room F. If not for a walkthrough at that point, I probably would have given up.

   I didn’t have much trouble navigating or remembering where things were, but that’s one of my mutant abilities; I think most people might be utterly confused (on one gaming site, the map to this world is more downloaded than the walkthrough).

   As for the rest: the game ran without a hitch. There were only 10 save slots, as opposed to the unlimited saves in _Rhem_; I would have liked more. The ending, which I reached after about 25 hours, was a bit anticlimactic, though you did get to take a nifty train ride out of the depths and into the upper world.

   I didn’t like _Rhem 2_ as much as I liked the original, but I still liked it and I’ll definitely play _Rhem 3_ when it comes out. If you like complicated puzzles and don’t mind a lot of running around to solve them, and if you have a good mind for detail and can stick to a task through some tedious sections, you’ll probably like this game.
2. Andrew Arensburger says:

   February 15, 2010 at 4:14 pm

   Review by Andrew Arensburger for Rhem 2
   Rating:
   Let’s get some things out of the way at the start: Rhem 2 has no plot. There is no dialog or character interaction to speak of. There are no action-packed cut scenes. The graphics are good but not fantastic. You will need to map and keep extensive notes. The puzzles are hard.

   One thing to bear in mind is that Rhem 2 isn’t a series of puzzles: the entire world is one gigantic puzzle, where everything is connected. You may see a door on the other side of a lake and ask yourself whether you’ve seen any hallways that lead to that door. You may need to trace a cable that runs through a wall, and you’ll have to remember what room lies on the other side, and what machinery you’ve seen in it. You may find your path blocked by a door and wonder, “where have I seen this door before, and how did it open?” You will need to plan a path through mazes that change as you make your way through them. You will need to keep track of what you’ve seen, and from which angles: if you’ve only seen three sides of a building, you can bet that the fourth side has an important clue. You will always, always need to know where you are, which way you’re facing, and where everything else in the world is.

   For all this, the puzzles (or sub-puzzles) may be hard, but they are always fair. You can’t die, you can’t get permanently stuck, and you can almost always reset things to the way they were before you started fiddling with them. A red light on a switch means it’s turned off, and a green light means it’s turned on. If you need to open a combination lock, all of the digits can be found without guesswork, although sometimes in non-obvious ways. Even if you have to get a solution from a walkthrough, you will never throw up your hands and exclaim, “How was I supposed to figure that out?!” Or if you do, you can look at a map and see how the rooms, cables, switches, etc. are connected so that you could have solved it.

   You will quickly get to know the happy sounds that mean that you’ve successfully accomplished something, and the buzzer that means that you can’t do something, or can’t do it yet, or haven’t done it correctly.

   There is a little bit of algebra, but nothing scary. There are no language-dependent puzzles, either.

   As I said earlier, you will need to make lots of notes, and keep your map up to date. Flipping a switch in one room might have an effect in another room, that you can only get to via a long, circuitous path. Other reviewers have been turned off by this, and that’s understandable.

   The bottom line is that Rhem 2 is tough but fair. This is not a game that you can play for a few minutes at a time, or in which you can just solve a puzzle, forget about it, and move on to the next. But if you can work through it and solve it, preferably without downloading a map, you’ll get a real sense of accomplishment.
3. David B. bogie says:

   February 15, 2010 at 4:34 pm

   Review by David B. bogie for Rhem 2
   Rating:
   RHEM is beautifully designed and fiendishly clever. If you like this type of game and have lots of time to invest, buy RHEM2. But, I say, save your money. This is time you do NOT need to spend in front of your Macintosh. It’s just not worth it unless you REALLY like this type of game.
   
   I love puzzles but RHEM2 made me completely nuts. I studied the game forum discussions before I bought it and I even have a walkthrough/spoiler. Still, I had to give it away after wasting twenty-five hours of my life. The problems for me are the seeming randomness of the puzzle clues, the mindless wandering required and the silliness of running back and forth between far flung rooms to see if there are any possible connections to the junk you find. How would one know some buttons in a deep cavern might or might not control doors somewhere else, far far away in the complex. How would one ever know which of the brown pipes turn on the flickering candles in the House Picture Room? I have no fear of math but RHEM2′s combination of algebra and colored pipes is just too goofy for me.

   Like a bad movie, RHEM2 was a complete waste of my time and I really resent that because there are so many other wonderful things to do with my time. I understand there are other reasons than mine why people enjoy playing games on their computers. My only comparison in this genre is the MYST franchise, which, if you’re a serious adventure gamer, is probably not on your list of excellent games and I appreciate that. If you liked Myst, you probably won’t like RHEM2. If you thought Myst was simple-minded and juvenile, I think you will love RHEM2. More power to you. I had to give up.

   david boise ID
4. Catherine R. Yost says:

   February 15, 2010 at 5:20 pm

   Review by Catherine R. Yost for Rhem 2
   Rating:
   I really liked the puzzles in this game as much as I liked any one of the Myst series of games. I was entranced from the start, just like a really good book, I couldn’t put it down. The only thing I would downgrade the game for is the graphics, they don’t come close to anything from Myst. Visually it is not stunning. Mentally it is very pleasurable.
5. S. A. Cox says:

   February 15, 2010 at 5:37 pm

   Review by S. A. Cox for Rhem 2
   Rating:
   When I played Rhem I was lost and did not finish the game. Then I purchased Rhem2 and was pleased that they put a compass on the screen so you know which way you were heading. I use a walkthrough because otherwise I really am lost and Rhem2 was a challange, but I finished the game and really enjoyed it. I went back to Rhem and finished the game, but missed the compass. I am looking forward to Rhem3.