Don't bother cracking this code

As an avid gamer, there's a lot of books I read, or movies I watch, and I think: "Man, that would make for an awesome video game." \n"The Da Vinci Code" just isn't one of them. \nSure, it's an interesting yarn about the life of a Harvard professor of religious symbology intertwining with a secret society and the French police, in search of the Holy Grail. But, there's little in the book that would make for a great video game. Still, some corporate shill somewhere decided this would be a great opportunity to cash in on the popularity of the book that sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, and movie that premiered May 19. \nThe result is a game sub-par in almost every way.\n"The Da Vinci Code" game harkens back to PC point-and-click adventure games of the early '90s like "Myst." This means you spend a lot of time just kind of wandering around wide open environments looking for clues to extremely abstract puzzles. \nThe puzzles, by the way, come in two varieties: either, "Duh, I remember this from the book!" or "What the hell am I supposed to do here - I've been wandering around aimlessly for the past hour looking for some tablet I missed, and have no clue what to do!" This problem is then punctuated by your companion on the quest, Cryptographer Sophie Neveu, who gives you great advice like, "I know there's something we missed!" and "We have to keep looking!"\nThere's a reason games like this aren't made anymore. They're not very fun.\nOn top of that, the narrative from the book is substantially changed in the name of this already horrible puzzle solving. The now famous, "So dark the con of man" line? Not even found on the Mona Lisa.\nIt's also a lot harder to understand a character's motivation without pages of text to explain it. At least the voice acting is competent.\nBesides new puzzles not found in the book or movie, the back of the box also touts this game's great stealth and combat.\nThe combat is just plain boring, as fights initiate a mini-game where you press buttons as prompted to lay the smack-down on French police and evil monks. This is the real shame since the Collective's last few games, "Star Wars Episode III," "Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb" and "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" had very fun fighting mechanics.\nIf there's any highlight to the game, it's the music and some of the graphics. The pieces on the soundtrack are classical, almost monastic church music, like something you would hear on Easter, or Christmas, which is especially fitting to the mood. Graphics are more of a mixed bag. Backgrounds look fantastic; walking around the Louvre, you can actually recognize many of the famous pieces of art. It's like going on a virtual tour, and there's even some great lighting and shadow effects. \nCharacters, however, look wooden and a little blocky, like they belong in an original Playstation game, which also takes a lot away from caring about the story.\n"The Da Vinci Code" is yet another in a long line of games made only to cash in on the popularity of its license. It's so completely devoid of fun or novel gameplay ideas that I can't possibly recommend it to gamers, and it tinkers with the story so much, few fans of the book will find it worth their time.