Physicus - Die Rückkehr - Review english

Diese Seite auf deutsch

Back to Adventure-Archiv starting page

Physicus 2 - Die Rückkehr

(= Physicus 2 - The Return)

Release date: 10/2003
Developer: Ruske & Pühretmaier
Publisher: Heureka-Klett

Homepage
Boxshots

Game language and manual German

USK: vor all ages

Developer's recommandation: 12 years and up

A review by slydos 11th February 2004

Heureka-Klett and developer Ruske&Pühretmaier created with "Physicus" 5 years ago one of the most successful edutainment adventures. Since then the title was translated into many languages. Already in the first part the players had to save the small planet, getting it rotating again by the ignition of an impulse machine. Everything seemed to run wonderfully, but now in "Physicus 2 - the Return" gamers are fetched back on the same planet by a mysterious help call.

Story

Some time ago a meteorite hit the planet. But the traces are hardly discoverable anymore and the planet is also abandoned by the scientists once living there in the meantime. The players must succeed in entering the inside of the laboratories. In the laboratories you'll find clues: a video tape of the scientists and a spaceship of a far planet. A chamber of the spaceship is empty and there is a survivor: A child named Soi, who badly needs help. Though a shuttle exists to return Soi to his planet, the spacecraft is missing energy and the gas mixture for Soi and the inside of the capsule must be manufactured, so that the child can breathe. Will we succeed to re-activate the space shuttle and send Soi to his homeland? We slip into the role of a nameless female protagonist, who can move from island to island with a dirigible airship, as soon as we procured the necessary flight modules. In addition we must solve the riddles on the 4 islands...

Installation/start

"Physicus 2 - The Return" comes on 2 CDROMs with a manual in the well known fine looking box from Heureka-Klett. For the installation we have to use the setup-file from CD1, afterwards everything runs smoothly and nearly without any effort on our part. During the installation we once must enter the attached copy protection code and also leave CD1 in the drive during each program start. Convenient is the system check during the first installation and the display of the ascertained values. Once would have been enough however (as with Historion 2 or Geograficus), instead clicking this screen during each start of the game. If you also skip the following intro, which shows the meteorite impact, you arrive at the starting scene, where you can begin playing or load a previously saved game.

Controls/handling

"Physicus 2 - the Return" can be controlled by mouse exclusively, but there are also some short keys to e. g. save or load fast. The handling resembles very much the simultaneously published "Geograficus".

In this 1st-person game one navigates gradually through fixed screens by clicking on arrows á la Myst. Other interactive areas, where one can take up, use or manipulate objects are indicated by different hand-shaped cursors.

In the lower right screen area are two buttons for inventory and the option menu. A click opens the inventory which can show 8 objects at the same time. Should there be more items, you must scroll. Moving the mouse over an item fades in a text description. Inventory objects are used by drag&drop and slip back automatically into the inventory, if they do not fit.

A click on the button "options" opens a screen to adjust different program settings, such as switching on/off the knowledge part-speaker or animations, volume, brightness and screen fading.

Saving and Loading as well as Exiting or Restarting the game are likewise possible from this overview. There are 24 savegames, which are chronologically descending arranged, so that one has to scroll starting from the 7th savegame. In addition we can enter short texts (with umlauts). Strg-S creates a quicksave, which can be found always on top of the list. A reverse order of the savegames and an overwriting warning would be appropriate. The loading procedures runs off quite fast. Quitting the game is however lengthily, since one cannot skip the outro.

The knowledge part in "Physicus 2" can be reached by a button in the lower left corner of the screen. Within the chapters we use a navigation bar. The speaker, who can be turned off, starts as soon as a chapter is opened.

The handling is quite easy to learn. From time to time it takes a short moment, until the cursor shows up again after scene change and so there is always a certain delay, when you actually want to go fast through several screens. Excellent the exact documentation of really all functions in the manual.

Graphics/atmosphere

The graphics consist of beautiful 2D fixed images with very few animated elements. In "Physicus 2 - the Return" there are hardly representations of living characters except in loomy videos and the cutscenes, which show our character in a mini-zeppelin. The only organism is that we are looking for the whole time and shows up 2-3 times briefly. There are no dialogues. Marvelously realistic the surging sea in the cutscenes, which unfortunately finds no continuation in the game, because here the sea is visually frozen too. But we are lucky, in the end we are awarded with a close-up of our protagonist.

That Ruske&Pühretmaier know how to design living scenes too, they show in Historion and also in Geograficus. Physicus 2 remains ignored in this respect - who says that physics actually doesn't have to do anything with living creatures?

Music and sound effects are unobtrusively and thriftily set. Except bird's chirping, rushing of the sea and from time to time mechanical noises there is not much to be heard. This intensifies the lonely atmosphere even more.

Puzzles

In "Physicus 2 - the Return" only very simple inventory puzzles must be solved. We find an object and the right hotspot to apply is immediately obvious. Objects cannot be combined within the inventory. In addition there are a lot of knowledge puzzles, helping to crack codes or adjust machines. In addition one usually also has to calculate and to use formulas. For example it's about Ohm's Law, which schould be clear hereafter. There are memory puzzles created with random generator and one should be able to convert purely figurative formulated problems into physical terms. There are no action or dexterity elements and one cannot die in this game.

The learning part

The relevant information for puzzle solutions can be found in the learning part (in the shape of a laptop). It is divided into 7 chapters, where only atom physics and theory of relativity are new compared to the predecessor game. It's designed interesting and also partly interactive, and surely motivates to look at passages without game necessity. However necessary for the game was information about the laser light, and it didn't quite make sense to me, why it couln't be found in optics but atom physics. This already shows that puzzle-relevant information is sometimes very well hidden, what forces fast players to at least browse the learning part in all sections. That learning part can be independently played - in contrast to the context-sensitive one of Historion - and pleases in its clarity, example choice, graphic and acoustic representation.

Result

"Geograficus" and "Physicus 2" are very similar games looking at handling and graphics, thus easy to use. But while the developers tried to create an interesting and partly also funny background story with a set of NPCs in "Geograficus", with whom one can even interact, Physicus 2 is nevertheless rather uninspiring. Empty buildings and landscapes. We only meet other beings in 1-2 scenes and the outro. Physics pervades our entire life and could be presented quite more exciting, like it's successfully done in recent game-shows. A solid game with good learning part but the spark of suspense doesn't quite want to jump over.

Total rating: 72%

Adventure-Archiv rating system:

80% - 100% excellent game, very recommendable

70% - 79% good game, recommendable

60% - 69% satisfactory, restricted recommendable

50% - 59% sufficient (not very recommendable)

40% - 49% rather deficient (not to be recommended - for hardcore-adventure-freaks and collectors only)

0% - 39% worst (don't put your fingers on it)

System requirements PC:
Processor: 450 Mhz, Pentium III
Operating system: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
RAM: 64 MB (128 MB RAM recommended)
Hard disk: 100 MB
Graphic card 32 bit
16x CD-ROM-drive
16 bit sound card
Quicktime 6 (on CD)

System requirements MAC:
Processor: 450 Mhz, Power PC G3 or higher
Operating system: 8.6
RAM: 64 MB (128 MB RAM recommended)
Hard disk: 100 MB
Graphic card
16x CD-ROM-drive
Sound card
Quicktime 6 (on CD)

Played on:

Windows XP

P IV 1,6 GHz

512 MB RAM

16x DVD-ROM (Artec WRA-A40)

nVidia GeForce 2MX400 64 MB graphic card

Sound card DirectX-compatible

Menus and inventory are faded in bottom right