Adventure games aren't cool. Apart from a brief period in the mid Nineties when I sat my friends down in front of the original Discworld and watched them laugh themselves to death, I have walked the path to adventure alone and friendless. This is beginning to change thanks to companies like Telltale and Capcom, but for every Sam & Max there's another shoddy Myst clone. So it was with both excitement and trepidation that I took a look at the preview code for Agon: Lost Sword of Toledo, hoping for a slice of Sam & Max excellence but prepared for a poor man's Myst. So which one was it? Well, I find myself exercising my journalistic fence-sitting technique and saying ... both.

I was firmly perched on this particular fence from the moment I loaded up Agon. Take the intro sequence for example; it looks very nice, but adventure games don't need to look pretty - Discworld Noir looks like a dog but it's still as fun to play as it was back in 1999. The opening sequence introduces the game's hero, Professor Samuel Hunt. He's a distinguished chap with a First World War general's facial hair. This is a brave choice; any game that doesn't have a main character in his or her twenties has strayed so much from gaming's beaten track that it deserves our attention. It was an interesting sequence, reminding me of an Agatha Christie novel - a mysterious story, characters who are probably more than they seem and highly enigmatic plot points - promising stuff.

The game is set in Toledo, Spain, in the year 1903. The set up is fairly simple: the good professor must track down a mysterious sword, simply called the Sword of Toledo. From there on in, though, things get considerably more complex; there are scandals with the aristocracy, tales of revenge and the old favourite - secrets that relatives have taken to the grave. It's not exactly nail biting, but it should be intriguing enough to engage most players.

Aside from the impressive graphics, the first thing you notice is the sound design, which is also very good; the music is atmospheric and the voice acting is remarkably well done. It won't keep the big budget titles up at night with worry, but it doesn't grate on your ears in the way that Aura 2: The Sacred Rings did. It is also nice that every line of dialogue is recorded - I know this is the norm for PC adventure games, but as someone who plays a lot of games on the Wii, I've learnt to appreciate it.

It's soon after the intro sequence where things started going wrong for me. I was appalled to discover that, yes, Agon plays in the same way as Aura 2 and all those other embarrassments to adventure gaming does. For those who managed to dodge that particular bullet, you are not free to roam around the environments you find yourself in. You look around using the mouse from a first person viewpoint and can switch between a few set views in each location. In any of these views there may be something you can pick up, but it's always far too hard to tell between something you can interact with and something that's just part of the scenery.

There were only a few puzzles to discover in the version I played and the word for them would be "obscure". They can be solved, but they seem to rely a little too heavily on the old 'find an item hidden away in a tiny location you didn't know you could get to' mechanic for my taste, especially, as I've all ready stated, it's so hard to tell what you can and can't pick up. To counterbalance these factors, though, are the characters. Hunt himself is a softly spoken, gentle character, with a surprising amount of depth to him. The supporting cast are equally well thought out too; the character animations, script and voice acting all work together to create characters that seem, for want of a better word, realistic. You are drawn into their lives by the stories they tell and find yourself getting attached to them.

So here I am, still on my fence, trying to come up with any meaningful conclusion from all of this. In some respects, Agon: Lost Sword of Toledo is shaping up nicely, with interesting characters, good graphics and a plot that could go either way when the full extent of it unfolds. It also has awkward controls, occasionally frustrating puzzles and uses the age-old 'Myst' mechanic of limited movement and viewpoints, making it hard to spot the items that you'll need for solving those sometimes obscure puzzles. If you were a huge fan of Myst back in the day then you're sure to get a kick out of Agon; but if you like intuitive puzzles and an interface that isn't inherently frustrating then you should come and join me on the fence until the full game is released and can be fully explored.

Previewed by Michael Morwood for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).