
	Platform PC Genre Adventure Publisher City Interactive Developer City Interactive ESRB E +10 (Everyone) Released November 2008

- It’s an adventure game! - Gorgeous graphics - A female archaeologist that doesn’t use a stereotype to intrigue players

- Game ends abruptly - Cutscenes show a lack of polish, or was that Polish? - Protagonist wears long pants (see Pro comment number 3)

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Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual

Score: 7.0 / 10

It seems like the true adventure genre had taken a bit of a hiatus. It could just be me, but either way I’m happy to report that it seems like there are more of these games coming out and for those that enjoy a slower paced game, you’re in luck.

Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual has you playing the part of Sylvie Leroux as she looks to unfold the mystery that unravels in front of her. As Sylvie, you receive an urgent phone call from your Uncle who just happens to be an archaeologist. He informs you that he’s made an incredible discovery but when you arrive back at your childhood home, you find that he has vanished and so have some other items.

You’ll be thrown into a world of puzzles very early on in the game, which all seem quite inventive. I never felt frustrated with the puzzles and the hints were spot on

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without giving things away. It’s not to say there aren’t some strange solutions, but any seasoned adventuring type will be pleased that most of these are fairly tame and land less on the side of plain bizarre.

The voice over work is good as Sylvie remarks about each and every object you click on. Useful objects automatically get added to your inventory, and just as slick they

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disappear when they are no longer useful. Like many adventures games of this type, you’ll sometimes have to combine objects to make something more useful to accomplish a given task.

The graphics in this game are gorgeous – if you don’t count the cut scenes. It’s never really bothered me when voiceovers don’t match the lips in a cut scene. Polish developer City Interactive clearly made the game for the European market first. However, the quality of the video in these scenes is strangely off which strictly seems to be a technical issue. Certainly on a DVD-ROM there is a lot of room to put quality video in, so on this point there is no excuse.

The game does do a fair bit of back tracking, which of course we’ve come to expect from this type of game. I have to wonder though, is that really necessary anymore? I can understand for a download title or something that was cartridge based where space is at a premium. When it comes shipped on optical media however, you have to wonder if the reuse of assets is more about saving money than it is space and that means in some ways we haven’t advanced in this area of game development at all in the past twenty years. I digress.

Overall, I had a good time with this game. It’s value priced which hopefully means it might find its way into more gamers hands and that might mean a sequel is in the works.

I didn’t really care for the way the game ended. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that you’ll want to have that sequel come out next week. Which we all know doesn’t happen with video games, but on the upside I suppose it’s a good thing that I wanted more.

Chronicles of Mystery: The Scorpio Ritual is a decent title that is just a little shy of greatness. It once again proves compelling story combined with decent gameplay is always a formula for success. That’s one puzzle I wish all game developers could solve.

- Syd Bolton

(March 12, 2009)

Syd Bolton surrounds himself in classic games at the Personal Computer Museum (www.pcmuseum.ca) in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.