The Secrets of Da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript

I’m a fan of Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code." That is why I was excited to play The Secrets of Da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript. However, you won’t find Robert Langdon in this game, or a modern-day murder mystery. This game takes place in the 16th century, a few years after the death of Leonardo Da Vinci. You play Valdo, an apprentice working for Leonardo’s disciple, Francesco Melzi. After receiving a request to recover the missing manuscript, he uses his cover to gain access to the Manoir du Cloux. This is where Da Vinci spent his last few years. During this secret investigation, you encounter many examples of Da Vinci’s work.

The gameplay is the traditional point-and-click interface, similar to the popular Myst series. Basically, you move from one pre-rendered scene to the next. The game does add the ability to look all around, but this almost made it harder for me since I wanted to move just like you would with a first-person shooter. However, the detail and accuracy of rendering the Manoir could not be done with today’s computers, unless you had a high-end PC. The biggest issue with the point-and-click controls is that you can get a bit lost when you skip forward from one scene to the next. Also, because you can look all over, you have to do a lot more mousing around from every scene to cover all the areas, and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

The overall difficulty of the game wasn’t too bad, but it was very frustrating at times. Solving the puzzles was not always hard, instead it was simply something in a scene that you didn’t notice to click on. One of the first tasks is to enter Leonardo’s study, and I had to back track a few times before I realized that I just missed clicking on a key above one of the paintings. I guess I was too busy enjoying the beauty and clarity of the painting. A few puzzles involve sliding things around to get them in the right order, and other puzzles include using the correct items in your inventory to repair or print something. All are related to the works of Da Vinci in deciphering the code.

Other parts of the game simply become tedious, and it doesn’t help that the inventory system was hard to use. I had to refer to the manual to make sure I wasn’t missing something. From the inventory screen, you will find your portfolio. You need to read, and use this often throughout the game. You also have a conscience gauge in the game, but I didn’t see how it affected the game’s storyline at all.

Da Vinci has been part of our recent pop culture. His works in art and scientific inventions have influenced many books, television, movies and now games. If you are a big fan of Da Vinci or point-and-click style detective games, then you will enjoy this game. Otherwise this is just an average game.

Gameplay: 6.5
A small improvement over the older point-and-click navigation, but still a dated gameplay mechanic. The inventory screens were not intuitive.

Graphics: 7.1
The level of detail in recreating the Manoir du Cloux is amazing. Unfortunately, you don’t become immersed in the estate that you are investigating.

Sound: 5.9
Nothing too special is worth mentioning in the sound department. The voice over work was good. The background music wasn’t bad, and average click-and-scratch sound clips are used during puzzle solving.

Difficulty: Hard
Unless you are an avid detective-adventure game player, you will probably get stuck and frustrated in a few places.

Concept: 5.5 
The gameplay that Myst made popular is old, and should be retired. It was used as a method to navigate gorgeous worlds that couldn’t be rendered in real-time. Today’s computers can render detailed worlds with free-roaming gameplay that is more immersive.

Overall: 6.3
The storyline didn’t drive much excitement, or provide any motivation to solve the puzzles that were difficult at times. Only your interests in the works of Da Vinci keep you involved.