The Secrets of Da Vinci: The Forbidden Manuscript – PC – Review

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.