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Review: RHEMReviewed By: Bill Stiteler Review Computer: 800MHz iMac, 256MB RAM, GeForce 2 Review Date: July 18, 2003
Ah, yes, more like this, please. To make this review very, very short, RHEM is Myst. It is not Riven, which stunk, and it is not Exile, which I didn't play for fear that it would be like Riven. RHEM is Myst. And that is a great compliment.
So you see, RHEM is Myst. But this is not just a tracing; this is a loving attempt to duplicate the heart of the game, and that's what saves RHEM. It captures the mood and spirit of Myst, not just its form. The creepy mood of wandering along hallways that you know are empty, but still, why does it have to be so dark? The challenge of trying to decipher the alien logic of the puzzles that will allow you to escape what can only be described as a prison.
RHEM works because it gives you a feeling of being in the game. You can't rely on magic or increasing the skills of your character to overcome obstacles, you have to rely on your intelligence and your cleverness to see the way through. Graphically, the game looks good. The game never quite shakes the feeling that you're in an abandoned industrial park, but it never sinks into being mundane. Which I guess means it feels like an alien industrial park! My point being that it looks weird, spooky, and creepy.
Because RHEM is not OS X compatible, those without the ability to boot up in Mac OS 8 or 9 will have to play it in Classic Mode. This is how I played it, and beyond a few graphical oddities for a few seconds while booting up, RHEM played with no problems. I'm not sure RHEM will revive the adventure genre, but for people who long for the exploration of an alien land, this is the game they've been waiting for.
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In RHEM, you begin the game by being trapped in a strange and mysterious land which you cannot escape until you find the missing pieces of paper and reassemble them. You travel across a beautifully rendered landscape presented to you as a series of screens, like photographs, that you click your way through using a hand icon. Some objects you can interact with, like doors, levers and buttons. The land is utterly deserted except for some inserted Quicktime footage.
So, the game then. You start out traveling down a railway in a car you cannot stop. You have a letter from a friend who describes being trapped by mysterious powers, only being freed after he discovered four parts of a letter; which you must now find if you are ever to escape.
The puzzles are downright fiendish, and while a few are simple, some seem virtually impossible to solve without the help of a walkthrough. Resist the urge to peek, though, as RHEM will eventually yield its secrets. All in all, the game strikes a balance between the relatively simple puzzles of Myst, and the genuinely confusing "is this actually a puzzle?" style of Riven.