| Deleted User | Today I will be looking at The Messenger/Louvre the Final Curse! Yay!
Down to business:
Technical Stuff: The game ran fine on my Pentium II computer. It takes a while to load a game, but this is no more than a minor annoyance. This game has the common flaw of being shipped on 2 discs and demanding that you start the game with disc 1 in the drive at all times, then switch to disc 2. Thoughtfully, the game developers allowed me to circumvent this dialog box by pressing Escape, which started the game from the beginning of the second disc.
Multimedia: The graphics are very well done and are obviously very carefully researched. They are supposed to represent an actual location, the Louvre, and care has obviously taken to make the location look as realistic as possible, at different times in the Louvre's long history. The game is played from a 1st person perspective and uses full 360º rotation throughout. Video is presented through cutscenes. The makers of the game have decided to save disc space in the cutscenes by panning over still images of the characters, which makes them look very static. Several in-game cutscenes, such as your character cutting through a window with her knife, are used so many times that you may rapidly get sick of them, especially when the window shown in the cutscene does not look like the window you see during the game. The cutscenes are really the weak link in this otherwise well-done game.
Music, though atmospheric, is nothing to write home about. It consists mainly of atmospheric chords. I wish that adventure games overall had better music- I am a classical piano student myself and I appreciate this when it is done well. I have not played the famous opera scene in GK2 but I loved the Myst III Exile music.
Back on topic: Voice acting was good, but not good enough to save the boring cutscenes.
Puzzles: The puzzles in this game are almost all inventory-based. They are mostly quite easy. One irritating aspect of the game was the limited inventory (9 slots). Any excess objects had to be stored in special chests, which you find throughout the Louvre. In the JA review, this aspect of the game was complimented for adding realism to the game. I did not like it, though- I found I was often having to go to the chests to get needed items and this required a lot of travel time. This cost me my life several times- there are a few timed sequences which require specific inventory items to solve. They are often unexpected and if you do not have the right inventory item and use it within the few seconds given, you will die.
Some inventory items are hidden in strange places. One necessary item was hidden on top of a roof and needed to be shot down with a crossbow. Another was hidden on the floor under a table, with no indication whatsoever that there was anything of interest under the table. However, such irritating puzzles were few and far between and for the most part the puzzles were logical.
Plot: You play Morgane Sinclair, some sort of secret agent whose dead father has entrusted her with the task of retrieving four cursed objects called "Satan's Keys" from the Louvre. If combined, these objects have the power to destroy the world. As the story unflolds, we learn about the history of the Louvre throughout time. Interwoven with real events and historical figures is a labyrinthine story of the Black Templars, a branch of the Knights Templar gone wrong, who placed the curse on these four objects in the first place. The plot twists at the end of the game are very suspenseful and will keep you on the edge of your seat. We learn little about Morgane herself through the game, but this is hardly an important issue. The fun of this game comes from the thrill of sneaking through passageways a la Traitor's Gate, and learning a little bit about history while we're at it.
Verdict: Good, but not great. It is definitely worth a play if you can find it- I bought it in Business Depot for about $10.
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