t its core, The Da Vinci Code (no matter what medium you’re experiencing it in) is about an ancient mystery unraveled by two intellectuals. At what point, then, would one expect or demand that they get into frequent fistfights with the authorities? This is but one of many questions that the development team at The Collective had to answer when designing this adventure title and, while I don’t envy their position at all, I have to say that many of the core ideas don’t work very well.

The book does not contain, for example, a series of hand-to-hand brawls where the main characters are defending themselves while spouting off cheesy one-liners. The game, on the other hand, does. And often. It’s almost as if the video game version feels guilty when the subject matter gets too “high-brow,” and it’s a shame because when they do let players just sink into the mythology, it’s actually pretty fun.

Extensive menu systems let you access the character’s knowledge base on art history, cryptography, and symbolism. If the controls were tighter, this would be a joy for puzzle dorks like myself. Instead, I was cursing the random flipping between menus and inconsistent selection methods within puzzles. And, while I appreciate puzzles that I wouldn’t know the answers to from reading the book, most of these added sequences feel half-baked at best.

If the whole shindig had been tightened up and the game had faith in players (i.e. believe that we would find being a dorky scholar rewarding), the whole experience could have been much more pleasurable. Instead, the game muddies up what’s great and exciting about the novel with clunky video game clichés. It feels like National Geographic and Ultimate Fighting mushed together in a bad, bad way.