House of Tales, 2001
The Mystery of the Druids is a nice traditional point and click adventure game, which was released after a long pause in adventure genre. In simple words, it was a great relief to many adventure gamers who were tired playing first-person shooters or third-person full action games like the famous Tomb Raider series. In this game, we play the roles of Scotland Yard Detective Brent Halligan and a local museum Anthropologist Melanie Turner in investigating a series of ritualistic sacrificial "skeleton murders" committed in modern London. As you investigate, you unravel the mysterious lives of the ancient Druids, which have been extinct for over a thousand years, and powerful druid cults that still exist in this age of modern science. Your investigation takes you to various locations in London area, Europe and finally you travel back in time to destroy the origin of these evil cults when they were born.
The stunning still backgrounds in this game are beautifully pre-rendered in 3D and 3D characters are superimposed onto them by adding shadow and distance effect. The game-play is very smooth and runs like a movie in this absorbing non-linear story. While the music and sound effects are quite good in this game the dialogue repetition and feeling less voice acting is something that really effected the game rating from being the best. Puzzles are very good, which really needs good thinking and time to solve and sometime the players find himself fanatically using different inventory items with each other. Some events only occur if you choose an appropriate dialogue options as you interact with different game characters. Overall, it's an above average adventure that mustn't be missed by any adventure gamer.
