Chronicles of Mystery: Curse of the Ancient Temple (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

There have been many attempts at defining at just what makes a casual game in this flooded entertainment market, but if I was to have a guess it's when your mother not only talks about it, but adds it to her Christmas list as well. This year there are a number of titles that feature the same mix of adventure and puzzles. Something that Professor Layton does so well and other developers now want a piece of. Curse of the Ancient Temple also taps into the Dan Brown phenomenon with a 'Da Vinci Code' style plot mixed with a professor's disappearance and the mystery of the Knights Hospitaller. It's all intriguing stuff but is it any good?

Gameplay

In Chronicles of Mystery you play as Sylvie and can choose to tackle the game in either Relaxed or Normal Mode although the only difference here is a timer and more points in the Normal Mode. It does seem odd to split these because even if you do manage to fail to solve a game, you'll still be taken back to the start in both modes for another attempt. Anyway, on with the game. Your adventure is neatly split up into chapters, each of which has one or sometimes two locations and is all about exploration. You must search the various environments for a list of objects and when you do eventually locate them they are either used immediately or stored in your inventory. This is where the puzzle part of the game comes in as you come across lots of objects that may require an interaction of sorts or a missing component. This is all in your inventory but if you get really stuck a hint button will highlight what you should look at next.

The fact that the game contains 'loads of mini-games' is all over the box and, to be fair, they are dotted throughout the game and although some of them are repeated there's still a great deal of enjoyment to be had from the various challenges. They range from simple jigsaws and spot the difference to more challenging maths and logic games. A nice touch here is that once you have played them they become unlocked and available from the main menu. There's also extended gameplay to be enjoyed in the 'Hidden World' section, which is only mildly related to the main game and challenges you to find a list of missing objects against a timer. There's no Multiplayer but this was only ever going to be a single player experience and it's a very satisfying one.

Controls

While the game does allow you to move the screen around using the A, B, X and Y buttons it does seem a little pointless as you can't actually select anything.

Graphics

Given the cinematic experience the developers have tried to produce here it's fitting that the score sounds like it's been composed for a big screen outing. It's all good stuff too and perfectly suits the style of game helping to immerse the user into the rather complex plot while never becoming overbearing.

Sound

Visually the game is a mixture between a girl's graphic novel and a classic Lucasarts title (which is no bad thing) and while there's little in the way of animation the various areas are well designed allowing for much investigation. Oddly the actual characters seem to have been created by a different artist (or at least on a different package) making them stand out from the backgrounds and therefore they are not always part of their current location. You'll quickly get used to this though and as the main focus is on the puzzles as you are likely to tire of the endless dialogue. The mini-games are also well designed and are visually clear even if actually solving then is not always simple. Finally the interface, as you'd expect from a casual title, is very straightforward indeed and the simple options mean few will get lost as they navigate around the various gaming modes.

Dual screen

As we mentioned before all the control is touch screen and the majority of DS users will be very familiar with dragging and selecting required most of the mini-games (and the main adventure). There's even a chance to use the microphone, to blow sand off an object, but as with all games which feature this interaction, you can't actually see what's going on as you are far too close to the screen.

Final comments

Chronicles of Mystery is a bit of a strange beast really. While the mixture of well-crafted puzzles and simple adventure works, there are some areas, which will cause great frustration to some casual gamers. For instance some of the puzzles are incredibly difficult, not to complete but simply to work out what's going on. Fortunately there is a 'help' button although without this there's a good chance most people would never get to complete the game. Still, there's much to celebrate here and if you can forgive the terrible storyline you are left with an entertaining little game with lots of replay value and something my mum is likely to be paying for some time to come.

Pro: Good Variety of Mini-Games, Lots of Replay Value. Great Music
Con: Poor Storyline, Some Puzzles are Completely Puzzling
Final score: 7.3

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