The Da Vinci Code Review

OK, hands up all of you who've read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code or seen Ron Howard's recently released adaptation? That many, huh? No surprise really given the amount of press attention given to the novel since its release a few years ago, but how many of you have wanted to be in Langdon's position and attempt to decipher the Da Vinci Code?

Well if you are one of those people, Foundation9 subsidiary The Collective, and 2K Games have developed an adaptation of the novel/movie, though Messrs. Hanks, McKellen, and Reno (not to mention Audrey "Amelie" Tautou) are not featured in the game. Following the basic overall structure of Brown's book, Da Vinci Code begins with Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon called to the Louvre Museum to help solve the murder of curator Jacques Saunière. Quickly becoming the prime suspect, Langdon and police cryptologist Sophie Neveu try to track down Saunière's true murderer, and in the process uncover a 'truth' that threatens to shake the very foundations of the Catholic Church.

Despite having to solve a number of riddles, anagrams, and puzzles in both the book and the movie, it doesn't take much to realise that there aren't enough circumstances and situations to create a standard length videogame. So for that reason, The Collective has devised a number of locations and events that don't appear in Brown's novel, including Neveu's visit to her grandfather's mansion. New riddles and puzzles have also been created throughout the game so that those familiar with the story (and more importantly, the answers to certain puzzles) will also have a challenge. In fact one famous scene in the movie/novel, when Langdon and Neveu discover the "So dark the con of Man" phrase next to the Mona Lisa, has been changed to a brand new clue.

The variety of puzzles range from word games, including sliding-tile games last seen in Christmas stockings (they drove me nuts as a kid) through to the more standard adventure puzzles, for instance when Sophie has to get past Saunière's guard dogs by finding some food, putting it in their bowls, and finding a way to call them. There's a enough of a variety to test a gamer's brain, although it's with some of these puzzles, specifically some of the more cryptic ones, that hampers the overall enjoyment of The Da Vinci Code. These mostly relate to the fact that at times players will actually have a number of active puzzles at the same time, and that there can be a level of vagueness surrounding the solutions. At those points, the game actually degenerates into a frustrating trial and error experience with logic thrown out of the window, with one example occurring during Langdon's trip to Saint-Sulpice.

Considering that both the novel and the movie rarely contain violence (aside from Silas' murders and his obsession with flagellation) there is a higher amount of combat in the game than expected. In addition to encounters with French police officers in the Louvre, Langdon and Sophie also find themselves the targets of other homicidal monks with the game warning of their presence with 'chanting'. A little bit clunky, combat revolves around attack and defence situations beginning with a decision for players: attack or run. If the player begins to attack and hits the mark they then have to tap the face buttons in the same order as they're shown on screen in order launch into short-lived punching frenzy. A couple of those and an enemy is soon knocked out on the floor.

If players find themselves having to defend however, they have to tap the face buttons as they appear on screen rather than the string of symbols on display during an attacking phase. Parallels can be drawn to Quantic Dream's Fahrenheit, especially when players are called to button bash and push the analogue sticks in a certain way, for instance when trying to bash through a door or open a window. Though it does work adequately (just about), it's questionable as to whether there was ever any need to have combat situations in The Da Vinci Code; perhaps it would have been better if there had been a greater focus on Langdon's race to clear his name and work out the reasons behind Saunière's murder instead. If anything the combat just reinforces the plodding experience that the game provides players.

Besides the puzzles however, the animation and sound effects vary between being crude and downright awful. It's quite frankly laughable when you see the characters run around the various environments in the game, and the puffing sound effect when they run out of breath is verging on the disturbing. No it's not an adventure game in the usual sense, and the gameplay does largely rely on solving the puzzles, but does that mean that the rest of the game has to suffer? Taken at face value, the environments in the game such as the Louvre and the church at Saint-Sulpice capture the atmosphere created by the novel. Dark corners (at times a little too dark), shadows, and beams of light, all help to create the cloak and dagger world of intrigue painted by Brown and Howard to some success. That said however, atmosphere is no motivation to play through the game again once it's been completed...like the movie perhaps The Da Vinci Code is one that's better rented than purchased.