Jesus
wept.

And you too will feel betrayed
by a kiss if you spend your hard-earned thirty pieces of silver on
this travesty of a game.

For those two or three
people in the Western Hemisphere who do not know the story behind
The
Da Vinci Code, it concerns professor Robert Langdon and French
cryptologist Sophie Neveu and their search for the Holy Grail. A gruesome
murder inside the Louvre and clues in Da Vinci paintings put in motion
an epic adventure that leads to the discovery of a religious mystery
– which threatens to destroy the foundations of Christianity
– that has been protected by a secret society known as Opus Dei for
over two thousand years.

While many consider both
the book and the movie to be sacrilegious, the game – though it does
make a feeble attempts at controversy with the lead character’s
comments on the fourteen Stations of the Cross and the obligatory
Grail explanation by Sir Leigh Teabing – embodies everything
that is wrong not only with video games, but also the perverted mentality
that drives (and is destroying) this industry.

It
is poorly programmed, it is buggy and it is chock-full of atrocious
fighting and stealth sequences that must be completed in order to
progress in the game.

It is console mentality
at its worst. Rather than treating the gamer who spent his hard-earned
money on this game as an adult by including a save anywhere feature,
you instead can save only at specific, preset checkpoints. For example,
there is a sequence early on in which you must use a UV light to decipher
a cryptogram inscribed on the Mona Lisa. Not only does this take a
few minutes – even when you already know the answer –
but you must redo this sequence every single time no matter how far
you have progressed in this area until you reach the next checkpoint.
I had already fought off a guard in the Mona Lisa room, taken an object
from a statue, entered the main hall and studied two paintings, lifted
Sophie to retrieve an object from one of the paintings, snuck down
the hall to overhear a phone conversation, hid in the shadows and
then snuck into an office where I finally saved the game. While searching
the office for clues, a guard would invariably arrive and beat the
snot out of me. You would think that as I had saved in the office
this would be where I could restore my game, but you would be wrong
for I was continually forced to start over again all the way back
at the Mona Lisa before I had even solved the cryptogram! You are
continually forced to repeat lengthy sequences ad nauseam as the game
progress and the checkpoints become fewer.

But
this pales in comparison to the worst fighting sequences ever –
and I mean ever – in a video game. First of all, it is a shame
and an embarrassment that the developers felt it necessary to even
include so much fighting in a game that could have otherwise been
recommended. If you are not fighting with museum guards, then you
are exchanging blows with crazed monks or, later in the game –
get this – killer mercenaries. Talk about bastardizing the core
concept of the story.

Here’s the problem
in a nutshell: most major developers and publishers are cowards who
wet their britches over the complaints of some emotionally stunted
18-year old male reviewing games for a mainstream website or game
magazine, “This game was really boring as their were no action
sequences or gunfights.” Fortunately, these twisted opinions
are only prevalent in a minute part of the industry, but unfortunately
usually appear in the most conspicuous places. So the developer/publisher,
instead of attempting to appeal to the intellect of the gaming community,
instead tries to be ‘hip’ by appealing to the youngest
and thus, supposedly, most financially influential portion of the
gaming community and how better to do so, then to attempt to appeal
to that group of gamers least disposed to playing their games. So
in retrospect, we get a Mortal Kombat version
of Da Vinci Code, or a sequel to The
Longest Journey – arguably the best adventure
game of all-time – that incorporates unnecessary fighting and
stealth sequences.

A
large portion of why the fighting sequences are so bad can be attributed
to the controls. The developers have ‘borrowed’ the control
system that was so successful in Indigo
Prophecy and incorporated it into Da
Vinci Code. So while there are innovate sequences where
you must emulate action – such as using bolt cutters or opening a
window – by pressing the correct keypad or keyboard button,
there are also fighting sequences in which you must press the buttons
that flash on your screen in the correct series in order to pull off
a complex fight move.

When you are able to perform
a special move while fighting, the lights will blink at the bottom
of the screen in the order you are supposed to press them, but they
blink so fast that it is next to impossible to remember their order
much less press them on the keypad or controller before you are punched
again. If you are going to ‘borrow’ a control system,
you should at least make improvements to it and not make it more difficult.
Then, after much trial and error – even when you do press them in
the correct order they are more often then not non-responsive.

But
it gets worse. This game is so poorly programmed that while fighting
a guard, if you are losing, if you can get into stealth mode the guard
will not see you even if you are crouching right next to him. At one
point, while Sophie was fighting a guard in the Louvre, two other
guards, who were looking for the source of the noise, walked right
past the fight scene while mumbling that the noise they heard must
have been rats. And if you would rather not stay and fight like a
man, just instead run and hide and leave Sophie to do the fighting.
She will eventually escape and join you in your hiding place.

But wait, it gets even
worse! The sound effects in the fighting sequences are so brutal that
I found myself cringing as two or three guards were either simultaneously
pulverizing Sophie or sucker punching her face. The only thing missing
was a finishing move to remove her beating heart from her chest (a
long-time developer/publisher friend who I have never once hear utter
a profane word had this to say about the Da Vinci Code
fight sequences, “If they had just left the fighting out it
wouldn’t suck so bad. But no – they had to add some lame
ass jerk offing control nightmare fighting bullshit.”).

The
truly sad part is that at least 50% of this game is chock-full of
intriguing puzzles that adventure gamers would love. There are inventory
puzzles, puzzles utilizing the environment and numerous encrypted
substitution ciphers and mathematical puzzles. Unfortunately, too
many of the puzzles – such as the wonderful garden maze – are
absolutely ruined by lapses in which you must knock out policemen
from behind (or else be forced to engage in yet another bout of fisticuffs)
and drag their bodies out of view. But there are also far too many
times when the item you need to solve a puzzle is only inches away.

The graphics are nothing
to write to Rome about, though there is an absolutely stunning scene
in a church as sunlight reflects though stained-glass windows across
the pews and even your passing character. The voice-acting is passable,
though Sophie sounds too much like an English speaking woman trying
to speak English with a French accent rather than a French woman attempting
to speak English. The dialogue is at its best during overheard private
conversations between guards (especially in the sewers).

Finally, as it would take
another four or five pages to describe all of the bugs and poor programming,
let’s just list the ones that are most notable:

Bugs:

• Game froze twice and
  had to be restarted
• In the sewer area,
  Langdon became stuck in the wall
• Foes will often walk
  right past you if you crouch next to them
• A strange line wraps
  snake-like around doors throughout the game

Poor Programming:

• If you have an item
  in your hand, it usually must be dropped or you will not be able
  to examine another item or open a door
• Dialogue boxes sometimes
  appear on the screen and then stay there longer than they should
  and block the view of what you are trying to do
• Saved games cannot be
  accessed from within the in-game menu, you must totally leave the
  game and then load a save game
• Some levels can not
  be completed unless you fight and defeat the guards

Finally,
there are hidden Da Vinci inventions and coins hidden throughout the
game that will allow you to access some totally useless ‘bonus’
levels once you’ve completed the game. If you’re not very
good at finding hidden items, well fear not, for their locations are
identified by huge, glowing symbols that even Helen Keller could not
miss.

So read the book. See the
movie. Play the game. No seriously, that is the order needed to fully
enjoy the Da Vinci Code. The book is a great
read, the movie is passable entertainment, but by the time we reach
the watered-down game (which ironically costs twice as much as the
book and movie ticket combined), the grail is gone. My recommendation
is that you don’t purchase this game unless you are bald, for
you are sure to pull out all of your hair in frustration.

Final Grade: D
(find
out more about our grading system)