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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Just Skip This One and Go On to �Chemicus�, June 30, 2003
My wife and I, unfortunately, played the three existing science edutainment titles from Tivola, Physicus, Bioscopia, and Chemicus, out of order from their release sequence. We first played Physicus and enjoyed it but felt that it could have been much better. We then played Chemicus and felt that it truly was a much-improved game over Physicus in nearly every aspect (see my two reviews of these other games). Then we went back and played Bioscopia, which is actually the middle game of the triumvirate. We now wish we hadnt gotten spoiled by jumping to Chemicus first, because Bioscopia is a whole lot more like its predecessor Physicus.Bioscopia is a graphical, first-person adventure game (a la Myst, etc.), with an intended educational value added in by way of incorporating principles of Biology to its puzzles and game play ( with Physics and Chemistry obviously being the scientific genres of the other two games). Chemicus did such an outstanding job of basing most of its entire game play around all facets of Chemistry. Bioscopia (and the earlier Physicus) barely attain that same distinction. Most of the biological tie-in for this game is realized with an on-going requirement of keeping your key card charged up by answering multiple-choice Biology questions. This key card is then used to gain access to many of the large labs that encircle the games main environment. Other than that, there is really only one main Biology puzzle to the entire game, which is to eventually create an antidote that will cure the stricken heroine of the story. The graphics of the game are about its only redeeming virtue. The designers obviously spent a great deal of time and effort in realizing a lush and intricate environment to explore. But, like Physicus, the environment seems fairly closed. Youre basically just exploring one large segmented fortress where you have to find successive keys to gain access to new areas. This type of game design only works if the new areas are different enough to keep the player interested. Here, the new areas arent all that different. Oh, gee, look! Another large, weird-looking building to go into. And, the paths leading to and from the buildings are just a waste of time. One other key element to any successful adventure game, which is missing here, is rewarding the player, when he completes a particularly key or difficult puzzle, with some type of nugget, usually a visual cut-scene that advances the main story along. The only cut-scene found here is the games finale, which is really pretty lame once you finally reach it. The user interface also leaves much to be desired. There are way too many different directional icons for the navigational pointer. They are so confusing that it affected our ability to solve several of the puzzles in the game. The look down and the turn around icons are virtually the same and are both typically in the same area of the screen. Plus, there is one icon, an open hand, which is meant to signify that some activity can be performed here. Only, there are several places where you have to perform an activity, yet the pointer does not change to this hand. This is just a result of very sloppy programming and testing, but leads to a frustrating and unplayable game. We needed to peek into the supplied walk-through on several occasions just to see what we missed because of the poorly designed interface. If we had played this game prior to playing Chemicus, then I might have been a little more forgiving. Now, I just wish all three of these games could have been on the same level as Chemicus. At least, they are learning from their mistakes as they go. So, any future games (I hear they have a Chemicus II in the works), will hopefully keep getting better and better. For now, if you are doing these games in order, just skip this one and go on to Chemicus.
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