Jane Angel: Templar Mystery
3
5
1
1
A Mega HOG
Just consider a game made almost entirely of scrollable, heavily populated HO Scenes in which you have to find no less than 30 items [or more] in each of them. This is exactly what Templar Mystery offers you.
No adventure, rare puzzles, one minigame in 50 minutes of the demo and a couple of original features:
- #1: instead of simply finding the differences, you have to locate where the items are misplaced and replace them in the window on the right half of the screen as per the example given in the window on the left.
- #2: at the end of certain locations, you need to create and object sequence in order to obtain additional evidence objects; the idea is to give the correct number to each of the yellow tags..... yes, I know, it's a bit difficult to grasp at first... LOL
The sceneries in Chapter 1 are just photos; you start at LAX [L.A. Airport - baggage claim section] and this is the first HOS filled to the brim with all kinds of objects, which are given in a list that fills up as you eliminate items.
This, to me, seemed like it would last forever.
Hints recharge fast, thank Goodness, but the cursor is a..... noisy brat. Each time you misclick you hear a "bang", faintly at first, but it gets louder and louder with every additional misclick !
I had to mute my speakers; no big deal because you do have sound effects, which are another annoyance, but no voice-over [all cutscenes are scripted], and the in-game music is not worth remembering, save for Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
The only feature I really appreciated is the background to the story:
- the intro gives a summary of the history of the Knights Templar Order, how it was founded, what its objectives were [eg: the Holy Grail] and how it was persecuted by the King of France, jealous of its wealth; we learn a little bit about the Crusades, too, as well as, later in the game, about Columbus, his supposed link with the Order and how the surviving Knights would have reached America via an old Viking route.
Jane starts her own quest to find the Holy Grail, as the legend has it the Knights would have hidden it on the american continent....or maybe in Scotland.....
Needless to say this is not enough to induce me to buy this game; I quit at end of Chapter 1, there are simply too many HO Scenes for me and each one is much too long.
If you are a fun of the genre, this game stands a good chance to make you happy.
January 7, 2012