Mystery of the Druids
2001 House of Tales/CDV
W95/W98/ME
Mouse driven, 3rd person Adventure
Disclaimer
Third person, talk to everyone, detective type of adventure games are my
very favorite. Plus, the hottest graphics and fastest or newest whatever’s
don’t impress me. I’m an old fashioned story first, all that other stuff
second type of gal. So read this review with that thought in mind.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of time” Oops – wrong story –
sorry, just watched a rerun of The Golden Girls lol.
Let’s try that again – from the game manual :
“In the year 1000 AD the Druids were facing their toughest test of time.
Their numbers had dwindled dramatically through the rise of a new faith.
Fearing extinction, the last of the Druids took it upon themselves to
transfer their powers of magic and wisdom into five babies in a cruel rite
at the megalith circle of Stonehenge. A faction of the Druids feared that
the children would not grasp the huge responsibility bestowed upon them by
the ritual. With great power and no guidance, the children would grow up
to be a threat to mankind. To prevent this, the small faction abdicated
from the ritual, and so it remained incomplete. The children, borne from
the Druid’s sacrificial act, grew up and became powerful figures in
society. The secret existence of the Druid Circle was guaranteed, but
missing were the powers of the apathetic Druids of the past.”
You play a Scotland Yard detective named Brent Halligan – (who reminded me
a lot of Peter Falk in Colombo -I think it was the trench coat). You have
just been handed a murder investigation (called the Skeleton Murders) by
your chief who is less than enthralled with you but seems to have no
choice since his other investigator has bungled the case by arresting and
jailing the wrong man. Your chief is pretty convinced the wrong man was
arrested because bodies keep turning up and the MO is identical to the
earlier murders. So begins your journey both in the Present (finding the
ones responsible for the murders) and the Past (trying to prevent them
from happening in the first place). Along the way you learn about an
ancient religious sect known as The Druids. You are helped in your
investigation by a well known expert on druids, one Arthur Blake and an
anthropologist, Dr. Melanie Turner.
The game comes on 3 CD’s. One disk for installing, one for The Present and
the third for the Past. You only swap disks when you change times – the
game starts from whatever disk you are on. There also is a map feature
that once a location has been triggered all you do is click on the
location you want to go to and in a blink of an eye (or a ferryboat ride)
you’re there.
Some puzzles are logical and some are a bit of a stretch. There are also a
few of the “try everything in inventory to see if it works” type. But for
the most part, if you pay attention to your surroundings and pick up on
the clues from the people you talk to, you can generally figure out what
you need to do. Except for the tile puzzle in the basement near the end of
the game. If there was a clue on how to figure that one out it went
completely over my head. I solved it by trial and error and about two
hours of tile shuffling and muttering bad words at my monitor. And then
there’s the maze, a miserable, multi-tiered maze. And what’s worse (as if
that alone wasn’t enough) if you go back through the same door you came
out of, guess what? You wind up in a different location. There is no way
to back track on this baby. So my suggestion would be to just pull out a
wt and cheat, that is unless you’re a masochist or just really love the
challenge of a good maze (I am neither type, thank you very much).
The only major gripe I had were the few times that I knew I had the right
inventory item chosen but because I didn’t click exactly on the correct
pixeled hot spot it wouldn’t work. I spent a lot of time going back
through inventory items trying everything only to have the first thing I
tried work because this time I clicked in the right location. There are
also a few gruesome scenes but nothing you haven’t seen on say Buffy the
Vampire Killer. It was more of an “oh, yuck” rather than a “well, this is
disgusting” type of thing.
I came across no bugs - not one - game installed and run beautifully on my
computer.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game and it gets a big thumbs up from me
(big surprise huh?)– it had a very satisfying ending – and i was sad to
see it end -
Here’s hoping House of Tales is successful in their next sojourn.
System requirements
Minimum
P200
32 MB ram
2MB VGA video card (with or without 3D support)
16 bit sound card
Direct X8
Recommended
P400
3D accelerator card
copyright © 2002
GameBoomers
