An interesting landscape along with some engrossing puzzles make "Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb" stand out from many other PC adventure games.
Gamers don't actually play Cleopatra, named after the legendary ancient Egyptian queen. Instead they get to play lowly Thomas, a young apprentice to Akkad, Cleopatra's astrologer.
This little twist turns out to be a great background storyline. Plus, everything doesn't necessarily revolve around you.
The puzzles in "Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb," rated T for teen, are well thought out and you get to tinker with items related to Egyptian culture. So you find yourself reading star constellations, sleuthing around ancient wonders such as the Lighthouse of Alexandria and placing statues of Horus, Isis and Anubis on boards.
The game, published by Toronto's The Adventure Company and developed by France's Kheops Studios, has a standard PC adventure game inventory system, where you can combine objects that you acquire as you scour the landscape while clicking through various screens.
Egypt is depicted as a golden dusty yellow sandscape, populated with crocodiles, pyramids, hieroglyphics, papyrus and gorgeous buildings, complete with minor animations like realistic running water and burning fire.
An interesting feature is the opportunity to select an astrological sign for your character. This influences the difficulty of some of the challenges you face.
There are 'good' days and 'bad' days depending on what you selected. It points to an interesting possibility allowing for puzzles to be completed in a couple different ways - a feature sorely lacking in many PC adventure games.
It's also no surprise that moving around the locales is a snap with the map feature - this is the same studio that brought us "Destination: Treasure Island" last summer which also features an easy movement system.
Plus, gamers are rewarded with a number of exceptional cutscenes naturally placed at regular intervals to move along the storyline and break up the bottlenecks as you complete puzzles.
"Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb" has the usual amount of hammy dialogue common to PC adventure games but it does a great job with crisp voice-overs.
It's a strong PC adventure game offering that will appeal to fans of the genre and is easy enough for newcomers. It also has a few ideas that advance PC adventure gaming a couple of steps.
News from �The Canadian Press, 2008
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