The Mystery of the Druids

Published by CDV
Designed by House of Tales.
Platform: PC CD/ROM
Price £29.99
Released: Out Now

System requirements
Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/2000
Pentium 200 or better
32MB of RAM

The most eagerly awaited adventure game of the year is finally here. We've looked at this for a long time now. First of all we had a look at the demo then we interviewed Tobias Schachte and finally we looked at a preview, half game version. If you've read the aforementioned articles you'll know that we were impressed with what we had seen. However now the final version is here all that counts for nothing as what's important is how the release version shapes up. Let's have a look at the finished article.

The Mystery of the Druids is a point 'n' click adventure that places you in the role of Brent Halligan. Brent has to try and find out who has been committing a series of horrific murders. Very soon in the game Brent discovers that these are no ordinary murders and that something very sinister is going on. He soon enlists the help of academics Arthur Blake and Melanie Turner in his bid to solve the murders. However it soon becomes obvious that Brent will even have to go back in time in his fight against the druids and prevent the world from disaster.

The Mystery of the Druids has a good storyline and does seem to have been well thought out. In one or two places the full horror of the druids' activities is realised and believe me when I say it will shock you. We won't tell you exactly what happens but suffice to say you wouldn't want to have lunch with any of these druids.

There has been a real absence of quality adventure games over the past three or four years and while it wouldn't be true to say that The Mystery of the Druids is the finest adventure game ever, it would be fair to say that this is a high quality adventure game with a simple to use interface and an interesting plot that demands that it's played to the finish. Puzzles are for the most part quite logical and don't require ludicrous combinations of items to be solved. Compared to some of the more recent adventure games this game is a welcome relief and alongside Discworld Noir is the best non-LucasArts adventure game in years.

Graphically speaking the game is very good with 3D character models being used against pre-rendered backgrounds. Although the game supports the use of a 3D accelerated graphics card it is not advisable. In our preview we mentioned graphical glitches when using the 3D accelerated mode and to our dismay we found that they are still there. In 2D mode (highest performance and highest quality) there are no such problems and to be honest the game looks just as good.

We have made no secret of the fact that The Mystery of the Druids has no subtitles for cutscenes. While the rest of the game is fine in regard to subtitles (although we think they could have been positioned slightly better) it does seem silly that cutscenes are without them. However, there are very few cutscenes within the game so not too much is lost on the deaf gamer but we still think a patch is in order to correct this.

So how does it all shape up then? Well thankfully The Mystery of the Druids is a very good adventure game that deserves the attention of fans of the genre. An involving storyline, a delightfully simple interface, subtitles and pleasing graphics (in this day and age anyway) are the key ingredients for a good adventure game and we are pleased to say that this game has them all.

Overall Game Rating: 8.1/10 A must for every adventure fan.

Quality of text: 7.5/10 Good but the few cutscenes are not subtitled.

Graphics: 8/10 Pleasing graphics but the glitches make using the 3D accelerated mode impossible.

Interface:9/10 It's point 'n' click, what more can we say.

Gameplay: 8/10 Involving and compelling.