Review Reprise: The Mystery of the Druids

I’ve written hundreds of reviews, previews, and retrospectives during my twenty-odd years as a games inspector. As many of these appeared in the British version of PC Gamer magazine and nowhere else, now and again something from my archive may appear as one of THC’s daily posts. In late September 2001, inexplicably* PC Gamer asked me to step outside my heavily militarised comfort zone and review a point-and-click adventure.

* John Walker was on holiday?

Let’s assume you’ve already got the classic motor, the browbeaten sidekick, and the perpetually angry boss. What else do you need to make the grade as a British police detective? Here’s a short role-play to assess your suitability.

You are Brent Halligan and you’re in Oxford investigating a string of gory ritualistic murders. To further the investigation you need to make a phone call but you’ve lost your wallet and have no change for the nearby phone box. Do you…

A) Reverse the charges.

B) Return to New Scotland Yard to use the phone in your office.

or C) Return to New Scotland Yard to use the phone in your office only to find it’s out of order and none of your colleagues will let you use theirs. Go back to Oxford and locate a wino from whom you scrounge an empty bottle. Decamp to the forensics lab in London and use an old scarf (found earlier) to wipe dirty chemical flasks then chat with a technician until he offers to let you taste some medical alcohol. Pass out. Come round alone, find fingerprint powder and use it to dust the flasks, discovering the source of your aperitif. Decant alcohol into the bottle, remembering to mix it with apple juice (also found earlier). Zip back up the M40, find the wino, offer him a swig of ‘apple schnapps’. When he passes out, swipe the small change from his hat and – hurrah – make that phone call.

If you said A or B then you’re possible Morse material. If you said C then I would hazard a guess you also believe snakes make good shoelaces and toadstools are used by woodland folk in lieu of umbrellas.

Those who plumped for C will also enjoy TMOTD, an adventure poxed with the kind of convoluted and illogical conundrums that give the genre a bad name.

Sidestepping or postponing these migraine-inducing puzzles isn’t possible as the narrative follows an event sequence as rigid as rigor mortis. Spindly dialogue trees create a pretence of self-determination but it soon becomes clear that every question must be posed and every wizened branch explored.

To be fair, the writers should be congratulated for writing five hours of dialogue without a single funny line or well-turned phrase*. If the characterisation was slightly more credible it could perhaps pass as pantomime. If the animated polygonians strutting across the pre-rendered 2D stages moved with a touch more naturalism they could maybe pass as puppets. Cut-scenes – despite depicting cannibalism, involuntary amputation and (implicit) baby sacrifice – never manage to shock or frighten.

In the spirit of enquiry engendered by this title, we recommend the designers scour their inventory for a coat- hanger, a Dairylea triangle, a photograph of a pony, and a hand grenade, to help them solve the puzzle of why right-thinking gamers everywhere left this atrocity on the shelf.

* Looking back, these two accusations really weren’t fair. House of Tales did insert the odd gag, and the clumsy dialogue was probably a result of poor translation rather than flaws in the original writing.