The Mystery of the Druids
$19.95		(Win95/98/2000/Me/XP) (Retail) (DRUIDSPR)

Publisher: cdv

Blood and Gore / Violence

End of the Ritual, Before it Begins

In this classic adventure, you will take on the role of young Scotland Yard Detective Brent Halligan, assigned to solve the puzzle surrounding a mysterious order of Druids and a series of gruesome murders. It appears that the neo-Druids are conducting ritual killings in order to conjure up incredibly sinister forces.

Features:

• More than 50 impressive locations of the past and present
• More than 360 interactive scenes
• 3D characters (up to 1000 polygons)
• High resolution 2D / 3D graphics
• More than 20 speaking characters
• 5 Hours of Voice Overs
• Lip-sync dialogues created through phonetic speech analysis
• Non-linear dialogues
• Extensive real-time soundtrack
• Soundtrack and FX created with Dolby Surround.

The Story So Far:

In the year 1000 AD the druids were facing their extinction. The last druids decided to transfer their powers and magic onto five babies in a cruel rite at the megalith circle of Stonehenge, to make sure their secret powers survived.

A small group of the druids feared though that these children would never be taught how to responsibly use their druidic powers - they might become tyrants nobody could ever stop. To prevent this, the small group of druids kept their energy in the rite, so it remained incomplete.

The children, the "inheritants of the druids", grew up and became powerful personalities The secret existence of the druids circle was guaranteed, but not the whole druidic powers were united.

A Mysterious Murder:

The protagonist of the game is Scotland Yard Detective Brent Halligan, who one day has to investigate in a mysterious muder case. In the course of his investigations he finds out that he's dealing with a very extraordinary crime - maybe with a ritual murder.

After inquiries with anthropologist Dr. Turner he finds out that a druidic order might be responsible for the murder. With the aid of druid expert Arthur Blake, Halligan and Turner soon meet the central figure of the order, a wealthy and powerful Lord from the outskirts of London: Lord Sinclair.

It becomes obvious that the druids will complete their rite soon. Halligan and Turner now know, that only they can thwart this plan. To obtain this, the two of them have to overcome a lot of difficult tasks: At first things need to be done in the present time to be prepared for the dangerous mission.

Then they have to travel back in time and stop the preparations of the rite already in the past. For this purpose they have to familiarise themselves with the druidic sciences and rites, because you need the power of the four elements and to know how to use them to solve all puzzles and to finally obtain the mysterious rune staff, without which the druids cannot complete the rite.

Requirements:

Win95/98/2000/Me/XP: Pentium 200 MHz (Pentium II 400 recommended and 3D accelerator card), 32 MB RAM, 2 MB VGA video card (with or without 3D support), 16 bit sound card, 150 MB free hard drive space, DirectX 8.0.

Reviews:

Quandary Reviews by Gordon Alpin

"I liked the way you could play as both Brent and Melanie and though Melanie could have had more things to do it did remind me of Gabriel Knight and Grace or perhaps was closer to George and Nico in the Broken Sword games. It helped that Brent, despite evidence of his earlier immaturity, is quite likeable, as is Melanie. There are a couple of scenes that some may find disturbing, one involving the flesh being cut from the bones of a living character. The game does have a rating of 15 years and over because of this."

"The detailed graphics, sound effects and music are all very good and really contribute to the atmosphere of the game. It comes on three CDs; the first is an installation disk, the other two are named ‘the present’ and ‘the past’ and are self-contained story areas so there is no constant disk swapping."

"Despite the few criticisms detailed here, which I hope will be seen as constructive, I really enjoyed playing Mystery of the Druids. Maybe the beginning with a detective investigating a serious murder without access to essential equipment was stretching it a bit, but it did provide some humour and set up some good puzzles. It is a game where you have to think about what you are trying to achieve in the context of the story and consider how you may overcome the challenges set before you. I would certainly play a sequel should one be forthcoming."

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