Schizm Review

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Schizm

Review by Jen

Remember the game Reah? Probably not many of you have played it, but those who have will never forget those three too-too-hard endgame puzzles. And then the payoff for actually completing those suckers was anticlimactic to say the least. Well, I remember Reah, and it was with some trepidation that I began Schizm, a new game by the same developer.

Schizm begins at the end. The two heroes, Sam and Hannah, are being interviewed on a TV news show. They are telling how they rescued a bunch of scientists from an alien world. This opening cutscene serves admirably to set the scene for the events to follow.  It is then up to you to live the story through the game.

Gameplay starts with both characters arriving on this alien world and becoming separated. They have intermittent radio contact but ultimately they’re on their own for the first half of the game.  Hannah has landed in an organic world seemingly devoid of life (now there’s a contradiction for you!), and Sam has landed on a metallic platform high in the sky, amidst a field of balloons that look like they are sporting roots. You play as both Sam and Hannah and may switch between the two at almost any time throughout the game. Ultimately, you must bring Sam and Hannah together and find a way to free the planet from the force, the Schizm, that is hiding each from the other and all from the scientists and the alien people. The game’s story is both spare (as it must be since it is given to you in small doses throughout the game) and surprisingly rich. Schizm is ultimately a puzzle game, and it has a more interesting tale to tell than any other puzzle game I’ve ever played.

Speaking of puzzles … Most of the puzzles in Schizm involve learning enough of the alien language and technology to be able operate alien machinery. For instance, in Sam’s first puzzle, he must study five dials and figure out what to do with the symbols they show in order to open up a pearl dispenser and get the pearls.  There is very little inventory in Schizm; you work most of the puzzles where you find them and get immediate payoff for solving them. With one glaring exception, all of the puzzles in Schizm are difficult but fair. There are plenty of clues, and when you solve each puzzle, you get that incomparable feeling of satisfaction which is what I believe draws us back again and again to this strange hobby of ours.

The glaring exception mentioned above is a puzzle reminiscent of those three endgame puzzles in Reah: It was arbitrary and unrealistic. All of the rest of the puzzles fit very well into the overall game and help create a believable world. In the “bad” puzzle, you have to beat the computer at a logic game twice in a row to raise part of a bridge, and to raise the rest of the bridge, you have to beat the computer twice more in a little bit harder version of the same game. Are we expected to believe that the aliens would have set themselves this kind of barrier to using their very own bridge? I think what happened is the programmer figured out how to program this swell puzzle and didn’t want his or her nice little piece of code to go to waste and so simply plunked it into this game. Okay, rant over, but I was really pissed off because of that puzzle. It was a jarring seam in an otherwise seamless game. Okay, rant not quite over yet, just one more thing: It’s as if the developers were trying to shoot themselves in their figurative foot, repeating the same mistake they should have learned from with Reah: These types of puzzles, where you have to make 300 tries before you finally solve them, are not fun!

Schizm is a beautiful game. Its graphics rival and perhaps even surpass those in Myst 3: Exile. I played the CD version, and the graphics are horribly overcompressed with compression artifacts all over the place and yet the game still was lovely.  (I would love to play the DVD and see Schizm in its full high-resolution glory.) The cutscenes are magnificent, and the transitions from one location to another are all animated. What an imagination the visual designer has!

Schizm has actors. We’re talking real people, FMV-type actors. Besides Hannah and Sam, whom you rarely actually see but hear a lot of, there are “ghosts” of the aliens and the scientists that manage to breach the Schizm from time to time to give you some story or clues. Gotta love that FMV!

Schizm’s music is very low-key and ambient. So much so that once when I was doing a sound-related puzzle, I had turned off the music, completed the puzzle, and forgot to turn the music back on again for some time after that. Even without the music, there are plenty of sounds in the game; the characters have audible footsteps and things that should creak do creak, et cetera. The sound designer did a great job in helping make Schizm’s world seem real.

Schizm is very similar to Myst 3. Both have the many-worlds-as-one idea, both have the same high-quality animation, both have live actors, and both have lots of puzzles embedded into their environments. But when it comes right down to it, I enjoyed Schizm more. In Myst 3, I felt confused and disoriented too often for my comfort, and in Schizm I knew where I was and what I was doing the whole time even if I didn’t know how to do it.

Schizm breaks no new ground but it goes over the old ground in high style. It’s a long and satisfying game and yet at the same time not too frustrating. Except that once. … The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: LK Avalon Publisher: Dreamcatcher Release Date: September 2001

Available for: Windows

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Screenshots

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System Requirements

CD-ROM Version: Windows 95/98/ME/XP Pentium II 300 MHz 32 MB of RAM 200 MB free hard disk space 12X CD-ROM drive DirectX compatible video and sound card

DVD Version: DVD-ROM Windows 95/98/ME/XP Pentium II 333 MHz 32 MB RAM 2X DVD-ROM drive DirectX compatible video and sound card

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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