The Da Vinci Code
Crack the code... before the story puts you to sleep.
Published: May 30, 2006
Time will tell whether my lack of exposure to The Da Vinci Code book or movie made for a better game experience, but it should be known that I know only the smallest bits about both. Perhaps that works to the game's advantage, because I didn't know how the story would turn out, and it's likely that someone who's read the book will benefit from not only knowing where it's headed, but seeing some of the locations in the pages of the book brought to life with the help of the movie license.
One of the nicest things I can say about the game, however, is that it works well as a adventure game. Not The Da Vinci Code: The Adventure Game of the Movie, but just an old-school adventure game. It helps that the expertise of Charles Cecil, who is more than familiar with draconian sects and high adventure in his Broken Sword games, was tapped to aid in the design concepts of the game. It also helps that I cut my teeth on the Zorks, and Quests from Sierra and LucasArts' amazing adventure games, so I was starved for a good adventure, but this is a honest-to-goodness real adventure game.
It borrows from those older games in a way, but developer The Collective (fresh from their stint at the wasted potential of Getting Up) pulled things from other games too. There's a little Metal Gear Solid here, touches of Indigo Prophecy and plenty lifted from The Collective's own action games like Buffy: Chaos Bleeds. What this means is a game that satisfies on the puzzle side of things, but still has satisfyingly visceral combat too.
The puzzles of Da Vinci are a mixture of numeric ciphers, word substitution cryptograms and some old-fashioned key-a-in-slot-b-at-the-other-end-of-the-level puzzles. When doused in heavy doses of combat that's more timed button presses and sequences rather than button mashing, it all mixes together quite nicely, and when the game liberally sprinkles in sequences that make you, yes, button mash and use the analog sticks together, it feels very sure of itself.
The storyline, however, doesn't. What begins as a murder mystery as a cryptologist is called in to decode a mystery message from the victim, the curator of the Louvre, quickly spirals into a race to decode clues left by Da Vinci about the true nature of the Holy Grail. Along the way, the cryptologist and the curator's granddaughter are framed for the murder, and an albino with super strength seems hell-bent on recovering the clues that the pair are uncovering.
It's a decent idea, though the execution is a little marred by the presentation style. While the cryptologist, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu, his new female friend, spend plenty of time gallivanting across Europe, there's a sense that the adventure itself is rather small. As both characters lazily amble around various locales, inspecting paintings with UV lights and decoding a string of clues left by the now-deceased Louvre-running grandpappy, the game feels more like running from puzzle to puzzle rather than playing out a storyline.
Granted, those puzzles are fun, but you'll repeat the same steps of walking around an area, picking up objects, using them together to uncover another puzzle, then solving that one to get a cryptex puzzle (a cylindrical puzzle with rotating letters that you may have seen in the movie's preview) that shows the next (poorly done) CG cutscene which moves you to a new area. This is an adventure game's basic core, and I like adventure games, so I didn't mind this, but even I wasn't distracted enough to realize it was a bit repetitive.
One of the nicest things I can say about the game, however, is that it works well as a adventure game. Not The Da Vinci Code: The Adventure Game of the Movie, but just an old-school adventure game. It helps that the expertise of Charles Cecil, who is more than familiar with draconian sects and high adventure in his Broken Sword games, was tapped to aid in the design concepts of the game. It also helps that I cut my teeth on the Zorks, and Quests from Sierra and LucasArts' amazing adventure games, so I was starved for a good adventure, but this is a honest-to-goodness real adventure game.
It borrows from those older games in a way, but developer The Collective (fresh from their stint at the wasted potential of Getting Up) pulled things from other games too. There's a little Metal Gear Solid here, touches of Indigo Prophecy and plenty lifted from The Collective's own action games like Buffy: Chaos Bleeds. What this means is a game that satisfies on the puzzle side of things, but still has satisfyingly visceral combat too.
The puzzles of Da Vinci are a mixture of numeric ciphers, word substitution cryptograms and some old-fashioned key-a-in-slot-b-at-the-other-end-of-the-level puzzles. When doused in heavy doses of combat that's more timed button presses and sequences rather than button mashing, it all mixes together quite nicely, and when the game liberally sprinkles in sequences that make you, yes, button mash and use the analog sticks together, it feels very sure of itself.
The storyline, however, doesn't. What begins as a murder mystery as a cryptologist is called in to decode a mystery message from the victim, the curator of the Louvre, quickly spirals into a race to decode clues left by Da Vinci about the true nature of the Holy Grail. Along the way, the cryptologist and the curator's granddaughter are framed for the murder, and an albino with super strength seems hell-bent on recovering the clues that the pair are uncovering.
It's a decent idea, though the execution is a little marred by the presentation style. While the cryptologist, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu, his new female friend, spend plenty of time gallivanting across Europe, there's a sense that the adventure itself is rather small. As both characters lazily amble around various locales, inspecting paintings with UV lights and decoding a string of clues left by the now-deceased Louvre-running grandpappy, the game feels more like running from puzzle to puzzle rather than playing out a storyline.
Granted, those puzzles are fun, but you'll repeat the same steps of walking around an area, picking up objects, using them together to uncover another puzzle, then solving that one to get a cryptex puzzle (a cylindrical puzzle with rotating letters that you may have seen in the movie's preview) that shows the next (poorly done) CG cutscene which moves you to a new area. This is an adventure game's basic core, and I like adventure games, so I didn't mind this, but even I wasn't distracted enough to realize it was a bit repetitive.
