Posts Tagged ‘rhem 3’
Rhem 3
by Pace on April 8th, 2008 @ 5:39 pm in
Off-Topic
Tags: adventure games, myst, pc games, rhem, rhem 3, video games
I just finished Rhem 3, and I liked it a lot.
When I looked at the cover, I thought “Sigh, another Myst knockoff.” And yes, it is a Myst knockoff, but it’s no Crystal Key. It’s very well done, and a huge amount of fun, if and only if you love puzzles. There is no plot. The scenery isn’t breathtaking or fanciful like in Myst. It’s well rendered, and I did indeed gasp with amazement like I did in Myst, but for different reasons. In Myst, I gasped at the many beautiful and awe-inspiring views, landscapes, and structures. In Rhem, I gasped at the sheer vastness of the place. “Oh my God, it’s another entire new area!” I would exclaim quite often.
In a sense, Rhem 3 is one enormous puzzle. Many actions you take in one area will cause you to backtrack to an entirely different area to reap the consequences of your initial action. But it’s not arbitrary non-local effects (which I hate). If you follow the pipe connected to that button, and follow it, and figure out where it comes out on the other side when it goes into that wall… it will eventually lead you to the place where the non-local effect happens.
My favourite instance of this is how there are tons of clues scrawled on the backs of doors. There will be a door that can only be opened and closed from one side. You have to close it, then make a huge winding loop around the entire game to get to the other side of the door to see the clue. Similarly for elevators and such. I really like that kind of puzzle. It requires really knowing your way around the area and becoming holistically familiar with Rhem. You can’t just have a separate page of notes for each area, because they are all connected. All eight pages of notes worth. (: Maps were very important, and I really enjoyed mapping out the different areas. It was HARD, because the world is so intrinsically 3-D. Sometimes I’d need to know what was directly under me or above me, and that was very challenging to map accurately.
I loved the puzzles in Rhem 3. There was a really cool puzzle where two bridges could be either up or down, and when they were up they could be used as ladders. A tricky sequence of ups, downs, platform manipulations and crossovers was needed to get to all the various places. A lot of them are like “Oh, I’ve seen that set of symbols before! They’re paired with this other set of symbols, and this other set of symbols is the key to unlock this puzzle.”
Minor spoilers ahead.
