Controversial in content that has nearly torn those once close apart.
A big cash cow that has been milked for 38.6 million copies sold to date (and counting).
Translated into 42 languages worldwide.
Had one lawsuit in the UK that I know of.
And features a movie starring Tom Hanks (because you apparently haven’t made it until Tom Hanks has starred in your movie version).
No I’m not talking about the controversial Toy Story 3 that was one of the things that nearly tore Disney and Pixar apart, I’m talking about The Da Vinci Code (coming this May in both theaters and video game stores near and far you).

Well I, for one, didn’t think there would be a video game version of this movie! Lord knows I gave the makers of the movie too much credit because I thought they would have more class than this! Heh. Consider me wrong then, since the only people who don‘t seem to be milking their movie for a game tie-in is, weirdly enough, the M:I:III people since I have not seen word one on a game tie-in to that movie yet… weird.
Anyway going back on topic, apparently since Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and whoever else is milking the religious controversy that is The Da Vinci Code isn’t milking enough damn money from the cash cow that is you and me, the powers that be has decided that we need MORE RELEASES to further milk that cow until our nipples are sore, hence how we have come to talking about The Da Vinci Code, the Official Video Game of the book turned movie starring Tom Hanks… and yes, I’m still glad there was no Forrest Gump the Official Video Game game. Thank you, everyone who made Forrest Gump!

Presently slated to bring religious strife and cannon fodder to Cable News talking heads for days to come, The Da Vinci Code is coming to your PC, PS2 & Xbox soon… eh. Yeah, apparently there‘s seemingly no plans for a next gen release of the game, ala XBox360, but it‘s not like you bought an XBox360 in anticipation for games like this. Another no show is there‘s no Nintendo DS version, which sucks since the genre seems to fit the Nintendo DS so well.
What genre? It seems that, well, in order to create a game about the digging up of ancient secrets the people who made the game have decided to dig up an ancient relic of video gaming past by bringing back… wait for it, wait for it… the point & click genre of adventure gaming!
Yeah, right. Apparently nobody told anyone who made this game that point & click should be a PC exclusive genre since it refers to you rolling the mouse icon on screen to “point” and then “click” with the mouse button… you know, hence the name of the genre, “Point” and “Click”… ok, yes there’s a PC version so I guess it fits but still! Look, considering that one of the biggest in the genre (Tim Schaffer of such games as Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island series) isn’t even doing Point & Click anymore (he’s gone to platforming) AND companies like Sierra are taking their old school point & click franchises (in this case the cheeky love monkey known as Leisure Suit Larry) and retooling them for console release as platformers then why the hell are some companies still trying to extract the faint traces of remaining bone marrow out of shattered remains of the dead husk that is the beast known as Point & Click!!
(The future of Point & Click, PS, is on the Nintendo DS, where you can actually Point & Click!)

Well, logic isn’t going to be playing into this (especially since nobody thought of putting this point & click game on the Nintendo DS where you CAN both POINT AND CLICK) as 2K Games throws away conventional wisdom (which they have done so much times before on previous releases) to justify creating a Da Vinci Code game in time for the movie, with third party developer The Collective co-conspiracing in the creation of what is said to be “a stylistic adventure, one that’s both about ancient culture and that updates a strangely ancient genre”. Yeah. You can’t get much more ancient than point & click… well, short of the side scroller but nobody’s dumb enough to make a side scrolling Da Vinci Code game, that’ll never fly.
Revisiting the past of gaming, well, isn’t a crime, but it can be if the game is not right for it.
Take for instance the never released game version of Christian Gossett’s The Red Star. Apparently the people at the now defunct Acclaim thought it would be good to straddle this game with an ancient side scrolling beat-em-up slash overhead Contra form of gameplay. That, of course, was a terrible idea and the game (thankfully) never saw the light of day past a single demo released in Playstation magazine as the company crashed and burned before this dog of a game released to the mass public.

But since we know The Da Vinci Code isn’t going to be retarded old school side scrolling (thankfully) what will it be like? Well according to what I read about the game, The Da Vinci Code “gleans classic adventure elements” from games like the “Broken Sword” franchise, even going so far as getting one of the people who worked on the Broken Sword series to work on The Da Vinci Code… eh? Anyway this is supposed to create a “rich cultural backdrop of art, literature, and architecture from real life, and modernizes the one-time PC point-and-click interface with distinct interfaces and action…” Are you convinced yet?
At this point revelation might have dawned on you… that is, of course, if you are a veteran of the Broken Sword franchise of games. If not you‘ll just have to wait

until the game hits to see what those who are already familiar with the Broken Sword games knows by heart.
If you are a Broken Sword fan you might be up for The Da Vinci Code.
If you are a Broken Sword critic you’re going to be down on The Da Vinci Code.
If you are me then you only know that Broken Sword’s foray onto the Xbox wasn’t universally loved and it got a rather disappointing score on X-Play, which makes you wary about playing The Da Vinci Code.
Though, for the record, you didn’t need to have played Broken Sword to have a taste of what kind of control issues you’ll be facing when you play a point & click on the consoles. If you played Myst III : Exile on the PS2, for instance, you already had your 4-1-1 on how a point & click plays on consoles and know what you should be expecting when you first get your hands on The Da Vinci Code in the coming days.

What’s the story? You start off in the role of Professor Robert Langdon (I’m guessing you’re the Hanks, Tom Hanks) who, along with French cryptographer (and all about possibly hot babe) Sophie Neveu, have to solve puzzles (uh-huh), uncover “clues” (right), and reveal the mystery behind the Da Vinci Code.
Here’s a hint : Jesus and Mary Magdalene got married and had a kid.
Ok, while solving a seemingly simple murder AGH!! DAMMIT what the HELL is that screenshot of a NAKED DEAD OLD DUDE WITH A TOWEL AROUND HIS WAIST with a pentagram scrawled on his stomach!! Agh -- ugh, I shouldn’t have looked at the images that were on the original review… agh, I’m scarred for life…. Ok, ok, I’m over it now. Sorry. Anyway after somebody knocks off the old dude Langdon and Neveu end up uncovering a 2,000 year old conspiracy about Jesus getting jiggy with Mary Magdalene and having a kid through clues encoded in paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci… because apparently Da Vinci had time to invent future inventions, paint masterpieces AND be embroiled in some sort of ancient time of Christ conspiracy at the same time. Wonderous.

However if you are looking towards the stars as you play the game it looks like you might be disappointed.
The game is going to be based on the book, so the characters will not be Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou… which is probably just a convenient way to explain away why Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou couldn’t be bothered to do voice act their own characters in the game version… maybe. Mind you if they do recreate their characters for the game I would be applauding them for this, since lots of actors in movies seem to pass the buck on the video game version of their own movies and refuse to step into a VO studio for what will probably be 3 or so hours of voiceover work. Wow, hard work huh.

One plus to this format though (besides giving Tom Hanks an “out” on having to do video game voiceover work) is that the game will show stuff the movie either couldn’t (due to time constrictions), or wouldn’t (due to the inability of the film creators to make the film 100% true to the book because they didn’t want to piss off conservative Christians). This might be good since the game will go above and beyond the content of the movie, which should keep it going longer than a straight movie to game translation would have which hopefully means you won’t finish the game in one sitting. However, mind you, if there is still watering down of scenes in the game in comparison to the original book you’ll know why that happened.

Now we come to the game, and your first possible enemy who might not be the church, or the secretive organization hiding the secret of 2000 years ago… but may be the camera system used in the game!
The system is supposed to be a mix of “traditional camera angels” and cinematic perspectives”… right, let’s hope that’s not a fancy way of saying they’re going to be using an old school Resident Evil slash “Point & Click” style of static camera angles during the game. If the Point & Click is old, the static camera angle is even older… and unwelcome in games.
As if to mock that statement, the following information cast light on what the camerawork will do in the game… let’s hope I’m just overreacting here.

One - “The Camera will automatically find the most dramatic angles during a scene, with the idea that they’ll draw the most emotion from a player.”
Hmmm… would that emotion be excitement or anger and rage? (Player smash?)
The upside? The camera will move just when you need it to and serve a valuable function.
Downside? The fact that the camera wants to be “dramatic”, which should spell disaster, especially when there are at least a dozen “hot spots” in one room. Eh? Ok. Let’s say you need to walk from one side of a room to the other, searching for clues and items to pick up along the way. Sounds easy, right? If the camera was a 3rd Person Shooter camera that followed you then this would be a snap… however as the camera spins and whirls from “hot spot” “dramatic angle” to the next you’ll find your character will soon resemble your standard drunken Texan as you seemingly walk in circles, bump into things, and continuously walk out the entrance you came in from over and over again. Thankfully, however, they dropped the whole arresting people in bars in Texas so you won’t have to worry about being arrested for impersonating a drunk person.

Two - “Sometimes you’re in control of the camera and sometimes you’re not.”
Oh, just like Mounds and Almond Joy. Sometimes the game feels like

it’s nuts, sometimes it let’s you control the camera… wow.
Let’s just hope this doesn’t bring back the much maligned Western Ending camera view (where the camera sets up a shot in a hallway or alley and watches as you walk off into the “sunset”).

Otherwise you’ll do the usual stuff people do in these games.
You’ll watch cutscenes, most likely NOT from the movie since the game is based on the book which is just another reason to cheap out and not give players actual movie scenes to watch… sounds kinda like how the makers of Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire cheaped out by not showing movie cuts in their game.
Anyway as long as you don’t want “The Neverending Cutscenes” you shouldn’t have problem watching cutscenes, right? Right.
You’ll listen (and “talk”) to NPC Characters (NPC being Non Player Characters for you non AD&D fantasy gaming individuals). And yes, this is going to be a long thing since most point & clicks have you talking to people here and there and everywhere… forever and ever.
Interface with art and objects… yeah, right. This, of course, includes the favorite interaction of point & click gaming, mainly the interaction with 90% of painted fake doors that lead nowhere, and constantly remind you how truly limited the “environment“ you are exploring is by having you jiggle the knobs of 1001 “locked“ doors. Thanks, guys! Oh, and then there’s the inability to interact with 90% of rendered background that does nothing no matter how much you poke it! Apparently you’ll never get hungry or need liquids or something to pass the time between poking clues and mysterious interactive items, so there is no real need for you to touch anything but the small amount of interactive items! Yeah, that sounds fun.
Oh, and you’ll do the Resident Evil task of collecting items, folders, files, and other things that supposed to help you “unravel” the “mystery” of the Da Vinci code, because there is no other way to do this… that and you’re character apparently doesn’t want to watch the History Channel and get the whole story on Unraveling The Da Vinci Code. Yeah.

Now here’s where the link to Broken Sword comes in.
Hope you liked the puzzles in the Broken Sword games because the game’s puzzle designer, Charles Cecil, is doing the work on the puzzles in The Da Vinci Code.
Good news this should mean that the puzzles will be “clever, intuitive, and fun to solve”.
Bad news is if the puzzles remind you of stuff you solved in Broken Sword (or other PC Point & Click games)… well… guess why!
To possibly alleviate the onset of boredom from muddling through this game, you’ll be given access to a “robust inventory”, and the ability to McGyver your inventory by combining items into new things… yeah, like we haven’t seen THAT option before! I’d list the games I’ve seen that in but some of them I really didn’t want to remember ever again, so I didn’t.
Another “plus” is that the inventory is supposed to be easy to manipulate, and not a large Red Sea of pages and pages that flood your screen like -- like -- a great flood. If this is true then that will at least make it easy for you to use the stuff you’re going to be forced to search for, as if we are not tired yet of games where you have to search an endless amount of rooms for an endless amount of items that you have to carry everywhere like a human packrat. Yeah, whoopee. The intrigue is just getting to me… not.

Did I mention that The Collective promises to give you a “cohesive information system” that functions like a “giant interactive encyclopedia”? Really? Have you even attempted to read the encyclopedia of information on your DS version of Age of Empires : Age of Kings yet? No? Didn’t think so.
Just because the gamemakeres have “built” a “library” in your came it doesn’t mean the people who bought the game has “come” for said library. The whole “If you build it they will come” thing just doesn’t work all the time, this being one case in point.
However if you do want to flip through the data here you’ll find stuff on people, locations in the game, objects you have clicked in the past or have stuffed into your pockets like a hyperactive kleptomaniac, artwork you have seen… why do they always hide the erotic paintings everytime I go through a video game rendered museum… ah, oh and historical items. Yeah. Unless you are forced to read these to solve puzzles in this game I’m betting the average gamer is so going to ignore this!
Oh, and if this wasn’t enough “incentive” to get this game you can also count on the game offering up public re-creations of real art from Western European cultures! Yes! I am so hyped right now I can’t hardly contain my-- oh, who am I kidding… sigh. Is that supposed to replace solid gameplay? I don’t think so.
Anyway you need to collect items, then cross-reference the items you have acquired (stolen, misplaced, picked up and put into your pockets, borrowed, whatever) with the info system so you can have a legitimate excuse to become educated while you pl-- I mean so you can solve puzzles.
Of course if you want a QUICKER way to solve puzzles you can see if there’s a Cliff’s Note version of The Da Vinci code since the game’s puzzles in sections are seemingly are just lifts from the book so if you get stuck somewhere just cheat and flip through the book, it should give you an idea of how to beat the puzzle.

Next is the game’s “combat system”. Yeah, right.
As you and I both know the words “combat system” and “point & click genre” don’t go together.
Somehow though The

Collective wants to make this game both a point & click puzzler AND an adventure game all at the same time, just like Broken Sword… though I’m not sure if it actually works well or not in Broken Sword. Does it?
Well, to “balance” these two seemingly incompatible functions The Collective built a “unique” combat system called the “Struggle System”… don’t Poke’mon do that when they run out of move strength?
Anyway the “Struggle System” involves Grecian wrestling style grappling… yeah, because lord knows I have been waiting forever for a game that allows me to get two guys to grope each other in a “battle sequence”, which is right behind my desire to work at the local Foodland as a food lackey for an evil food tyrant (yes, Elaine, I‘m talking to you). Sounds fun? Wait a sec, it gets “better”… and by better I mean “don’t fall asleep on me”… please don’t fall asleep on me, I don’t want to see you drool on the keyboard (or your palmpilot if you‘re reading me while on the road).

It’s Dancing With The Thugs as you and your dance partner grapples, gropes, and trade fashion secrets, and favorite quotes of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy as you “battle” by using a Simon Says style of rhythmic button mashing, which has you manhandling your enemy Brokeback Mountain style… maybe.
Ok. Here’s how it’s supposed to work from the review I read, because it’s grapplin’ time!
1-Bad guy comes at you. Bad man! Bad!
2-You grab bad guy. Grab bad guy! Touch!
3-You take hold of the enemies’ shoulders… buy him a beer, ask him to dance, no tongue on the first date.
4-Watch the screen… a series of face buttons are about to appear! Are they happy faces? Angry faces? Faces that look like they’re going to throw up just looking at this loving embrace you two are in? It doesn’t matter because you’re going to be punching faces shortly. As the faces appear you must quickly punch these face buttons in the correct order… eh! I’m guessing the faces have the Circle, Triangle, Square and X buttons on them so you can “punch” them in order… or you have to run the cursor over each face and press a button to “punch” them. Something. This part really isn’t very well explained, sorry.
5-If you win you’ll watch as your character performs flip moves, gut punches, or throws to disable.
6-If you’re playing as Tom Hanks you can take your opponent to the mountains, then whine later about how you are unable to quit them… or bring back fond memories of the movie Philadelphia… or play with Hank’s friend from Castaway… or wish you could play Brokeback Mountain the Videogame… something.
If that wasn’t enough you also have access to “stealth attacks”, the ability to push, defend, dodge enemies as well as the ability to throw items to distract them. Sadly, there seems to be no ability to insure that the game won’t make me think it has the potential to suck.

Otherwise promises promises! As the review ended there was promises that the game would do these things.
1-The game look pretty pretty pretty! Yeah, big promise.
2-Offer interesting dialogue… hell with interesting, how about dialogue that isn’t Xenosaga Episode II oh dear god I’m going to hurt myself if the cutscene lasts any longer dialogue!
3-Promise me film cutscenes! Please!
4-”Premise that stands out from many other titles in the adventure genre”. Really? Let’s see… while investigating a senseless death you are drawn into an ancient mystery that may destroy something as you uncover the horrible horrible truth… yeah, that sure sounds original… if you haven’t played any real good point & click or RPGs that is it sure sounds original.

However other promises show the failing of the game.
First off the promise of a “linear story-based title”. This basically says to me that the game will play the same over and over again, and have little replay value. So please I wish this game didn’t promise that.
Then the promise that the game will have a nice focus on “art and culture” and it‘s smart puzzles… in other words if you were looking for the next Syberia this is probably not it.
A “fun grappling system”, because groping grown men and trading phone numbers afterwards is so fun. You do it in WWE Wrestling games so why not here… unless you’re just playing it for the woman on woman wrestling, then you might as well play Rumble Roses.

Next gen may be all the rage these days… except for sports games that seem to be spade and neutered to a ridiculous degree in comparison to it’s richer and more content laden present gen versions, or certain games that fall short of expectations like Quake 4 which seems to have a problem with slowdown that you shouldn’t be having with a next gen console like the XBox360... Uh, yeah.
While the original reviewer didn’t think that this was going to be “movie license dog food” (as in The Da Vinci Code and not Quake 4) I have to agree with him… mostly because I wouldn’t feed a dog a game like this since they don’t deserve to suffer so.
Otherwise oh sure, if a been there done that point & click that we’ve seen done a dozen times over is supposed to be the new innovation in the franchise then dear lord go and get this one the minute it releases, it‘s all that and a box of wontons… just don’t complain to me if the sum of all our fears come true with this title, that’s what Collective is there for (for collecting and assimilating consumer complaints).
Yeah, in the meantime I’ll once again jump on the hand grenade of possible (bleep)y video gaming by making sure to review this game in the coming weeks. Duck and cover until then.