The master of adventure games, Charles Cecil, sends us out on yet another great quest, taking us from New York to Rome, through both Istanbul and Phoenix in search of a lost, godly weapon.
Firstly, I must say that I haven’t played any complete versions of the previous games in the series, so I will mostly review this game without comparing it to the others.
Story
George Stobbart is now working in a small detective office in Harlem, New York. One day a lady called Anna-Maria walks in the door and presents an old manuscript obviously leading to a hidden treasure. Just as he’s about to examine the manuscript the office is ambushed by gangsters looking for the manuscript and thus swept into another mystery: Who is this woman and why is the manuscript so important?
Graphics
It seems like the engine from the last game has returned. The graphics haven’t changed very much since last time, but they look good. The visual style is a little palette-like, giving the game some charm. It’s still realistic though, and the visual effects look extremely good if you consider the cartoonish flare over the rest of the game. The occasional heat haze and explosions look very satisfying indeed. Not that the rest of the game doesn’t look good, but it doesn’t showcase what the engine capable of, obviously.
I haven’t seen much of graphical flaws, and every location is full of color and variety, so there’s not much bad to say about the graphics other than that the game doesn’t utilize the engine to it’s fullest.
Sound
The overall sound design is very competent. The voice acting’s great, the soundtrack’s appropriate and the sound effects do their job well. However, I’ve experienced multiple times that the voices are cut off. This way I would have lost a a potentially important sentence here and there if I hadn’t enabled the subtitles.
as for the soundtrack, the ambient music isn’t constant, which is fine. This makes it a bit easier to concentrate on the riddles. Short cues play at regular intervals, and special clips play when you find the right solution to something or a vital clue.
The voice acting is believable and does a good job of conveying the mood of the characters, which is mostly being puzzled.
There isn’t a focus on sound effects in this game, as you’re mostly just standing still and figuring out how to get further, but the sound effects that are present do their job good and help bring the scenes to life.
Control & gameplay
As before, you use the mouse to play this game. You can either click on where you want to go or use the keyboard to move around. You run by holding shift. I needed some time to discover this because in previous games you ran by double clicking. The good old inventory menu and multiple interactions menus are of course working like a charm.
There’s not much innovation in terms of gameplay except a new hacking mini-game which is basically a fancy puzzle. The standard point-and-click gameplay is still intact and it still works. As they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Conclusion
The Angel of Death is a great game, but it seems to me like this is just a small upgrade of the last game with a new story and new locations. Of course, I don’t know this for sure, but seeing as the graphics and gameplay are so identical, I can’t help but think so. A little innovation could do the trick, but it’s still a good experience, even though I only used about 12 hours to complete the game. I actually expected a little more intricate puzzles and a longer storyline from this game.
Overall though, the game is well worth the time, and is highly recommended.
Score
8.2/10
