Louvre: The Final Curse

Written by Tom Clare in PSOne Game Reviews, Saturday 9 August, 2008

Released: 2002
Developer: Microids
Publisher: Wanadoo
Genre: Point 'n' Click
Platform: PSOne

Mona Lisa Scowl

Broken Sword aside, point 'n' click adventures have never really had the same impact on home consoles as they have for the PC, and Wanadoo's PSOne release of Louvre: The Final Curse in 2002 in a nutshell sums up why. Obvious control and graphical limitations aside, it had the potential to be a very good title - it was just spectacularly badly realised.

Playing as the geeky Lara Croft-wannabe Morgane Sinclair, you make haste to the Louvre museum after hearing a message left by her dead father, informing you of the need to collect four statues to prevent the end of the world, blah blah and so on. However, in a neat twist, you are at various points transported back in time; challenged to solve puzzles, evade guards and generally admire the place in all its medieval finery, in a time when the Louvre was still a castle and residence to the monarchy. Sadly, the prospect on paper is about as exciting as Louvre: The Final Curse gets, as the gameplay itself is really bad.

The most evident problem you are fighting with from the get-go is a general lack of interaction and useful options. Each area is played out from a static, first-person viewpoint that allows you to swing the camera around 360 degrees on the spot. Basically, the only things you can interact with are items, and the places you need to use the items, thus for all its posturing and attention to scenic detail, it feels a remarkably scant and lifeless environment to have to explore. There are sometime two, three or four static points where you can stand in a room, though it can be all too easy to miss items defined poorly and often obscured amongst the murky locales. Sometimes an item can only be interacted with from one angle even though it may be possible to see it from others, and things are made immeasurably harder by the addition of new items in previously explored areas; you are given no warning or indication of their appearance and you may waste ages looking for a way forward when the answer lies in a place you have already searched.

Then there's the absolutely beleaguering 'logic' the game employs. The solutions to the puzzles more often than not make no sense whatsoever - who ever heard of using knives on windows or a crossbow and bolt to open a wooden chest rather than a key? I must admit it is hard to go ten minutes without getting stuck, be it because you've overlooked a single, small hidden item several rooms ago or you can't figure out what bizarre concoction of items the game wants of you next, and pretty soon it becomes deeply aggravating.

Making matters worse still is the ridiculously poor inventory system. For starters, the cursor moves slower than a snail that's overdosed on morphine and whenever you are called upon to combine items (frequently), you must swing the arrow from one side of the screen all the way over to the other and it takes forever. Pettily, you can't even leave the inventory screen by pressing 'Start'; you must click a leaver in the bottom right corner instead. Having only eight inventory slots is also a huge hindrance; four of which are regularly occupied by the crossbow and the assorted crap that comes with it. The rest of the space builds up quickly, and as your character doesn't see it necessary to discard used keys and items, you constantly have to rearrange things. Oddly despite the limitations on how much you can carry, the developers saw fit to put a chest to store items in nearly every room, though given how painstaking the whole palaver is (loading times follow virtually every button press), you wish they could have used a bit more common sense.

Design debacles seem to torture the game from every avenue of its existence, right down to loading a saved game. The first disc initially offers all of two minutes gameplay before prompting you to insert the second one, which then provides a longer stint - the problem being that whenever you want to start a game saved on disc two, you have load it from the first disc as the second doesn't load up to a title screen, so you keep having to swap, which is another needless hassle.

The reason its on two discs in the first place is seemingly down to the copious use of FMV's. There are pointless fillers galore (there seems to be a different one for almost every door and staircase in the game), but in fairness some do add a bit of life to the proceedings. The reimagining of the Louvre from several points in history is an impressive undertaking with lots of fine (though rather blurry looking) paintings, tapestries and general background detail. It stops short of ever being 'atmospheric' however as with so little interaction, storyline progression or hints, it's easy to feel like an isolated presence.

Sound-wise it's of a similarly moderate quality; there's some decent voice-acting here and there, as well as some good though infrequent music though the sound effects become repetitive quite quickly and for the most part (aside the occasional bits of dialogue) you'll want to keep it muted.

You'll need the patience of a saint to conquer Louvre: The Final Curse and even if by some minor miracle you can get your head around its weird puzzles, you'll find a shallow and dull adventure that offers little in the way of plot and even less in the way of gameplay. An attractive setting and an adventure spanning two-discs may sound appealing, but this one should be avoided at all costs - even the relatively under subscribed catalogue of PlayStation point 'n' click adventures can offer up several better alternatives than this. Avoid.

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