The Da Vinci Code

Given thar the film adaptation for the da Vinci code remains divisive to this day, it makes sense that the game tie in would be more faithful to the book rather than the film when it comes to its story. The trouble is that for all that happens in the story, there isn't much room for a compelling game which means we have a puzzle game with elements of stealth and beat em up to create a campaign here.

The puzzles are what makes this game shine as they're very well thought out here, mostly relying on historical knowledge but also implementing elements of other action-adventure games from the 00s. Fans or the book will be pleased that every location is utilised here as control frequently switches between Robert on Sophie to allow them to visit the locations that they didn't in the film, this means there's much more interactions with Silus than in the film which leads to good horror elements of avoiding him like he's a resident evil boss. That's sadly where my positives for this game end as the beat em up elements are handled poorly here, it tasks Robert and Sophie with fighting goons and policemen like they did in the book but with very clunky quick time events to substitute actual fighting mechanics. I'm kind of stretching the definition of a beat em up as they do brawl with the enemies, just not in a way that requires much skill to defeat like in a traditional beat em up game. Stealth is also implemented to avoid large waves of enemies, it's not great either as they have simplistic Ai and even simpler pathways with makes it more of a nuisance than a challenge. One final issue I have are the graphics, this is one hideously ugly game which is made worse by the character animations. It’s hard to say if the developers had any hopes for this game given how little they had to work with from the source material, however they could've at least made the visuals look pretty.

It’s not the worst game tie in to a film, it's certainly no masterpiece, but there was some imagination put into the puzzle elements in its campaign.