Chemicus

_Chemicus_ is a first person game very much in the style of MYST: you are wandering through a virtually empty world picking up clues and solving puzzles. From time to time, as in the MYST series, you might see another person from a distance or receive a transmission from your imprisoned friend, but there is no character interaction. So the draw of this game is not clever, pun-filled scripting, but using close observation, deduction and sheer brainpower to get from point A to point B. There is not very much more story than is given to you in the introduction; to enjoy _Chemicus_ you have to enjoy solving inventory-based mechanical puzzles.

And the scenery, of course. _Chemicus_ is a really gorgeous game. The "Other Side" is depicted as a place enough like our own world to be somewhat familiar, but enough different to give a certain sense of alienation -- again, much like MYST. The buildings and landscapes have a kind of organic texture that I personally find appealing. Unfortunately, there is no 360-degree movement; _Chemicus_ is a slideshow game. That means you're quite limited as to what you can view closely and where you can go. Personally I didn't find that too annoying (my husband hates it!), particularly as this game is so long and full of puzzles. I just didn't feel as put out by not being able to explore more fully as I might have.

Aside from the graphics and the sound -- mainly subtle f/x -- the strength of this game is in the puzzles. Because they are all based on chemistry, there is a logic to them that is often lacking. Some of the puzzles are a bit confusing, but none is arbitrary. It does in fact help to have had a course in chemistry and some math, however. The game provides a "BRain Center" to teach you what you need to know to proceed, but I found that often the information it gave you wasn't quite enough. However, I was pretty astonished at how many of the tasks could be accomplished with no specialized knowledge. In a way, this game helps point out how much we use chemistry in everyday life, without thinking about it.

I had some serious problems running this game, however. Despite having far more than the system requirements and using a full install, _Chemicus_ ran at a frustratingly slow pace. The scene transitions and animations were especially slow; I found them a good place to grab a snack or make a cup of tea. I also had trouble with the game crashing, often when I was accessing the Brain Center. If it hadn't been for those two things, I would easily have given _Chemicus_ 5 stars.

Several other annoyances were minor: games were saved as a list with each game defined by date and time only, so it was hard to tell what each one was. I consider this minor beacuse I don't tend to backtrack much. There was a lot of back and forthing -- inventory was almost never used in the place you found it -- and some of the locations were hard to keep track of. One or two puzzles involved somewhat obscure solutions, aside from the chemistry.

_Chemicus_ comes complete with a PDF walkthrough in case you get stuck. I did have to access this a few times. I didn't really like the way it was set up because, as walkthroughs tend to, it only told you what to do without telling you how. It also presents events in a specific order, which might not be the way you've played, _Chemicus_ being extremely non-linear. And I think it would have been helpful if you could have accessed the help file without totally exiting the game.

Although marketed for "Everyone" _Chemicus_ will probably appeal best to science oriented teens and adults; I don't think it will really appeal to just any adventure gamer. A long game, it took me about 30 hours to complete.

If you like MYST-type games and if you like science experiments, you will probably like _Chemicus_.

Concept, 3D animation and graphics on this game are very good, but there are some aspects to the structure that really could use some improvement.

I found a major problem to be the navigation options, which are very limited and frustrating! The participant has to be turned in exactly the right position to navigate to a given section, instead of being able to point the cursor at the area you want to get to and being there.

Another problem is the help document, which gives a step-by-step run-through of the game, but gives no rationale for the actions. The result is, if you need help to figure something out, you have no real idea why you have to do what you're doing, so you have no clue as to how to proceed to solve future riddles. In addition, some of the actions are completely random, so the game doesn't stick to any one set of logic parameters, making it more confusing (IMHO) than necessary. The science is hard enough to understand!

Another point about the help doc: you have to close down the game every time you want to access the help information. Seems like that should have been designed to be accessible through the communicator and available as clues relating to aspects of the science involved in the specific actions.

One last point: there is no option to skip the introduction, so if you want to start a new game you have to sit through the whole boring - and poorly acted - scenario again.

As someone who would like to get more involved in this type of game, but is a relative novice to gaming and not well-versed in science, Chemicus seems difficult to get into and understand, unnecessarily confusing and hard to navigate. Maybe this just isn't my type of game, but it seems like the developers would want to make this as accessible to as many people as possible.

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   Written on November 5, 2002
   Summary: Wow!!
This game was challenging, I enjoyed it almost as much as myst. There were no glitches, the graphics were intense!! I would recommend this to everybody!