Mystery of the Druids

Rating:
Summary: An entertaining, frequently macabre Druidic mystery
Review: After waiting for more than five months after its release in North America, I finally purchased "Mystery of the Druids." I had read a number of negative reviews involving gameplay, bugs, and frequent system glitches, all of which caused me to wait a while before rushing out to buy a copy. But I had no problems installing or running the game on my computer, and was generally impressed with this mystery/thriller from German publishers CDV and House of Tales.

This was a labour of love for a small handful of programmers, and as such is not a totally polished, flawless game, but it has its bright points along with its flaws.

You play the roles of Detective Brent Halligan of Scotland Yard and Melanie Turner, an anthropologist at the Oxford Museum of Anthropology. Together you explore a string of gruesome murders in London known as the Skeleton Murders, for that is all that is found of the victims. Halligan suspects that there is something deeper and more sinister at work than simply a serial killer, so he enlists the help of Dr. Turner. Together they travel through time and develop a close relationship trying to stop five evil Druids who are trying to perfect a failed ritual performed 1,000 years ago.

The good:

+ Graphics: Beautifully rendered backgrounds rival those of "The Longest Journey" for detail and inventiveness

+ Music: instead of looping, music cycles much like in Myst 3. There was lovely accordion-themed music in France, and the rest of the music was pleasing without being Muzak-like or too repetitive

+ Storyline was very original, with many unforeseen twists and turns to add suspense

+ Many fascinating characters from both the past and present: Maglor, Capitain deNeuve, Pierre, Brent, Melanie, Dr. Blake, Chris Hecker, Lord Sinclair

+ Variety of settings and famous places: Scotland Yard, Portsmouth, Epping Forest, Oxford Library and Museum, Carmors, France and Stonehenge.

+ Humour: A pizza bill for 270 pounds, Detective Halligan photocopying his face, Hecker's practical joke involving medical alcohol, Hecker comparing human remains to family picnics when he was a boy

+ Time travel: the game alternates between the present (disc one) and the past (disc two).

The Bad:

- 3D models appear dated and move unrealistically. Closeups in cutscenes are garish.

- Some puzzles obviously lack logic--i.e. robbing a homeless man for change since no one in the office will let you use their phone, a forensic pathologist giving a colleague a swig of medical alcohol, using a file folder to open a lock, why French towns have German names on the map

- Some of the voice acting was *terrible,* especially Dr. Blake. Detective Halligan and Melanie were serviceable if sometimes uninspired. It still managed to steer clear of the infamous "We're Scots, God help ye" badness from Gabriel Knight III.

- The ending was lacking. After solving the final puzzle we only see around twenty seconds of follow up. Not enough for the hours of gameplay invested...where are Halligan and Turner headed with their careers and romantic relationship? Does Detective Halligan get fired or awarded? Perhaps it is a tie-in for a possible sequel.

- "Mystery of the Druids" deals with some extremely gruesome subject matter in graphic detail: humans being skinned alive, cannibalism (was that dinner scene *really* necessary? And Halligan, why were you so enthused after learning you were eating human flesh?), murders and suicides. This is NOT a game for children, the overly sensitive, or the squeamish (hence the M rating).

The curious:

+/- This game bears some resemblance to Gabriel Knight III: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned in that: you alternate between a detective and his sidekick, and in both games they are romantically involved with each other. Both games relied upon a religious/supernatural cult (Templars in GKIII, Druids in MoTD) using babies in their rituals. Both games have some truly bizarre cutscenes (GKIII wins hands down for reinventing the story of Jesus, paired with some scary hallucinogenic dream sequences).

Overall this is a solid little game with an interesting atmosphere that allows you to explore the past and present for clues in order to stop a Druid ritual that would spell disaster for mankind. Not the best game I've ever played, but certainly entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Let-Down
Review: At first glance, _Mystery of the Druids_ has a lot going for it. A 3rd person adventure with many hours of gameplay and really stunningly rendered graphics, it is unfortunately hampered by poor execution, illogical situations, and puzzles so contived as to be ludicrous.

You play Inspector Brent Halligan of Scotland Yard. As the game opens, you learn from your chief that a case that everyone had thought closed -- the Skeleton Murders -- has been reopened due to new evidence. The inspector formerly in charge of the case has been taken off it, and you're now in charge. You enlist the help of one Melanie Turner, an Oxford anthropologist, and together you discover that some aspects of the crimes are consistent with those of ancient Druidic ritual.

It's a good premise with lots of potential, and, as I said, the graphics are compelling. For gamers looking for an experience that will last more than a couple of days -- I took over a week to complete the game, about 35 hours -- MOTD is an obvious choice. But be prepared for plenty of frustration along the way.

The first irritation is the manner in which the converstions are set up. There are a good number of non-player characters with whom you can interact, and most of them are really quite amusing. Unfortunately, the designers did not come up with a way that you can skip over parts of conversations that have already taken place, so often you get bogged down in repeating the same things over and over to get to that one question that you didn't ask the first time around. It would have been helpful if only new conversation topics presented themselves each time you addressed an NPC, as in the Atlantis games, or if your character would observe that he didn't have any more questions right now. As it was, a good third of the game play was spent in redundant conversation. This got tedious very quickly.

Some of the puzzles were very good. The bad news is that many of them are really bad, either because the solutions are so far-fetched that it seems unlikely any sane person would ever think of that, or because they involve applying inventory items in highly unlikely ways. One puzzle in particular involved a solution that, in real life, would certainly lead to a messy death. I generally don't need hints or walkthroughs to complete games, but for MOTD one really is necessary unless you have the patience to try every single inventory item in every possible configuration, whether it makes any sense or not. Another puzzle involved reasoning that just didn't make any sense -- scientific or magical -- even when I read the walkthrough. In fact, the solution seemed really arbitrary and random. I would have appreciated a clue, somewhere, sometime, as to what the designers were thinking, but any such clues were conspicuously absent.

Brent Halligan is an okay character. He's presented as the Fox Mulder of Scotland Yard, always looking into weird UFO stuff. I thought they could have done a lot more with this, but it was only mentioned once or twice. There are a few times he does really stupid and pointless stuff, just to move the game along. Most of this could have been eliminated, as it didn't realy contibute much. Or, it would have been interesting to have two paths, one where he did the stupid thing and one where he didn't. I guess that was too complex. Whatever, it was pretty frustrating to see him do something really dumb and know what was going to come of it, yet not be able to do anything about it.

Although you did get to play Melanie once or twice, she was seriously underused. Mostly she followed Halligan around and gave him academic information that was 75% irrelevant. I would have liked to see her have a bigger role, like Grace in GK3. As it was, she was relatively devoid of personality and I wondered why they bothered with her in the first place.

Oh yeah: don't expect this game to give you any significant information about Druids. There was some, but it was largely buried in hokum. Neo-Druids may find MOTD offensive. Having played Jane Jensen's remarkably well-researched games, I thought MOTD displayed unusual laziness towards the subject matter.

The end game was probably the stupidest I have ever seen in any game at all; it alone was enough to make me downgrade my rating of MOTD from three to two stars.

MOTD is rated "mature" for blood and guts. I found there was one scene that was pretty grim, but as a whole it didn't strike me as any more brutal that what's in a lot of movies out today -- even less than some. Still, I wouldn't recommend it for very young players.

Installation, gameplay, and interface were fairly smooth and easy to understand, although I did have some trouble with mouse control; at times it was jerky and spasmodic. Background animations were beautiful -- when I saw the opening movie, I thought, "OOOH!" -- but the character animations were merely adequate and the voice acting wasn't anything special.

For all its problems, I can't really regret playing MOTD. hardcore adventure fans probably will want to do the same. Put it on your list of games to borrow or get used.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Let-Down
Review: At first glance, _Mystery of the Druids_ has a lot going for it. A 3rd person adventure with many hours of gameplay and really stunningly rendered graphics, it is unfortunately hampered by poor execution, illogical situations, and puzzles so contived as to be ludicrous.

You play Inspector Brent Halligan of Scotland Yard. As the game opens, you learn from your chief that a case that everyone had thought closed -- the Skeleton Murders -- has been reopened due to new evidence. The inspector formerly in charge of the case has been taken off it, and you're now in charge. You enlist the help of one Melanie Turner, an Oxford anthropologist, and together you discover that some aspects of the crimes are consistent with those of ancient Druidic ritual.

It's a good premise with lots of potential, and, as I said, the graphics are compelling. For gamers looking for an experience that will last more than a couple of days -- I took over a week to complete the game, about 35 hours -- MOTD is an obvious choice. But be prepared for plenty of frustration along the way.

The first irritation is the manner in which the converstions are set up. There are a good number of non-player characters with whom you can interact, and most of them are really quite amusing. Unfortunately, the designers did not come up with a way that you can skip over parts of conversations that have already taken place, so often you get bogged down in repeating the same things over and over to get to that one question that you didn't ask the first time around. It would have been helpful if only new conversation topics presented themselves each time you addressed an NPC, as in the Atlantis games, or if your character would observe that he didn't have any more questions right now. As it was, a good third of the game play was spent in redundant conversation. This got tedious very quickly.

Some of the puzzles were very good. The bad news is that many of them are really bad, either because the solutions are so far-fetched that it seems unlikely any sane person would ever think of that, or because they involve applying inventory items in highly unlikely ways. One puzzle in particular involved a solution that, in real life, would certainly lead to a messy death. I generally don't need hints or walkthroughs to complete games, but for MOTD one really is necessary unless you have the patience to try every single inventory item in every possible configuration, whether it makes any sense or not. Another puzzle involved reasoning that just didn't make any sense -- scientific or magical -- even when I read the walkthrough. In fact, the solution seemed really arbitrary and random. I would have appreciated a clue, somewhere, sometime, as to what the designers were thinking, but any such clues were conspicuously absent.

Brent Halligan is an okay character. He's presented as the Fox Mulder of Scotland Yard, always looking into weird UFO stuff. I thought they could have done a lot more with this, but it was only mentioned once or twice. There are a few times he does really stupid and pointless stuff, just to move the game along. Most of this could have been eliminated, as it didn't realy contibute much. Or, it would have been interesting to have two paths, one where he did the stupid thing and one where he didn't. I guess that was too complex. Whatever, it was pretty frustrating to see him do something really dumb and know what was going to come of it, yet not be able to do anything about it.

Although you did get to play Melanie once or twice, she was seriously underused. Mostly she followed Halligan around and gave him academic information that was 75% irrelevant. I would have liked to see her have a bigger role, like Grace in GK3. As it was, she was relatively devoid of personality and I wondered why they bothered with her in the first place.

Oh yeah: don't expect this game to give you any significant information about Druids. There was some, but it was largely buried in hokum. Neo-Druids may find MOTD offensive. Having played Jane Jensen's remarkably well-researched games, I thought MOTD displayed unusual laziness towards the subject matter.

The end game was probably the stupidest I have ever seen in any game at all; it alone was enough to make me downgrade my rating of MOTD from three to two stars.

MOTD is rated "mature" for blood and guts. I found there was one scene that was pretty grim, but as a whole it didn't strike me as any more brutal that what's in a lot of movies out today -- even less than some. Still, I wouldn't recommend it for very young players.

Installation, gameplay, and interface were fairly smooth and easy to understand, although I did have some trouble with mouse control; at times it was jerky and spasmodic. Background animations were beautiful -- when I saw the opening movie, I thought, "OOOH!" -- but the character animations were merely adequate and the voice acting wasn't anything special.

For all its problems, I can't really regret playing MOTD. hardcore adventure fans probably will want to do the same. Put it on your list of games to borrow or get used.

Rating:
Summary: A little difficult, but fun!
Review: I really enjoyed playing this game, the characters were really good and the plot was well-thought. The graphics were really good, considering this game was created in the year 2000. I really liked the enviornments but you have to scan each one carefully. The only problem I had with this game was that I got stuck a lot; their aren't many clues so it is easy to get lost. Overall, I would have to say, it was a fairly long game and I enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: A little difficult, but fun!
Review: I really enjoyed playing this game, the characters were really good and the plot was well-thought. The graphics were really good, considering this game was created in the year 2000. I really liked the enviornments but you have to scan each one carefully. The only problem I had with this game was that I got stuck a lot; their aren't many clues so it is easy to get lost. Overall, I would have to say, it was a fairly long game and I enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Freezes All the Time!
Review: This game looks really interesting and the bits and parts of it that I get to play are not too bad. The BAD thing is that the game FREEZES all the time! And it is NOT my computer. Every other game I have, all work fine. So I have had this game for 3 months and still can't get but about 1/4 of the way through without it freezing and me powering off my computer. Game play is fairly easy and the graphics are beautiful. Boy, would I like to finish playing this game.