Vejl. pris : 159 kr.

Chronicles of Mystery is a typical third-person adventure game, which possesses features from both the good and the bad aspects of the genre. The good parts are the wonderful art, the lighting, and the way the puzzles are integrated into the story. The bad parts are the lame story, the lack of difficulty for many of the puzzles, and the lip syncing in the cut scenes. Still, the game as a whole is a fairly pleasant experience and is enjoyable.

We begin the game with Sylvie Leroux, a young archeologist, alone in her apartment. She receives an unexpected phone call from her uncle, who is also an archeologist. He is currently working on a project on the island of Malta, and has found something that he thinks will help Sylvie in her research. He talks her into coming to Malta to see what he has found. When she arrives, she discovers that the local government has taken him off the dig, and that no one knows where he is. She discovers some information that links his dig to a group known as the Knights Hospitaller. The rest of the game involves Sylvie traveling around Europe trying to find her uncle against the backdrop of this mysterious group.

In typical adventure fashion, players will spend the majority of their time walking Sylvie around various locations, searching high and low for objects to collect. Often, there will be characters around who can give Sylvie needed information or who can help her in some other way. The puzzles are mostly inventory based ones that will require Sylvie to use inventory objects, either singly or combined together. These puzzles are well-integrated with the story and usually present no difficulty. However, sometimes new objects will appear in already visited locations, so watch out for those.

The interface works well and is easy to use to manipulate objects. Walking Sylvie around is easy and she can run or walk.

This is one of the nicest looking adventure games I’ve seen; it’s very pleasant to walk Sylvie around the attractive streets and buildings. The detail is high and the lighting is very good. There are small animations of birds flying, curtains waving and shutters banging that add to the overall viewing experience. The cut scenes aren’t quite as good because of bad lip syncing, which lends an odd appearance to the characters when they are speaking.

The story is the weakest part of the game. While this story is fiction, the Knights Hospitaller order itself is real. But, how often are we going to play adventure games that have to do with some mysterious religious artifact that was hidden and safeguarded for centuries and that may have some magical property to it? While the puzzles are nicely tied in to the story, the story itself leaves much to be desired.

I have had fun playing The Scorpio Ritual, mostly because of the visual attractiveness of the game and the nicely integrated puzzles. Looks usually don’t play a large part in my enjoyment of a game, but they do here, maybe because I would like to travel to many of these places. I did visit Europe last summer, but was only able to visit a few cities and countries.

I recommend this game to any adventure game enthusiast who enjoys a more casual approach to games and doesn’t mind easy puzzles or an unbelievable plot.