An adventure game; a game that should by its very own definition provide us with a suitably challenging, gripping adventure for which we will no doubt spend many hours engaged in. We want a gripping story to get involved in, crave various interesting characters to interact with and demand puzzles that require thought-provoking solutions. These elements are what make adventure games as enjoyable as we've long come to expect, and these are exactly what Crime Stories lacks.

A re-release of a game that was presumably, and unsurprisingly, ignored the first time around, Crime Stories is one of those extinct dinosaurs still clawing on for its survival long after its neighbours have evolved into sleeker, more intelligent creatures that have learned how to adapt with the times. It's a point and click game that seems desperate to recreate the heyday of the Lucasarts adventure game, back in a time when Lucasarts really could do no wrong and weren't burdened with providing half hearted movie tie-ins of half hearted movies.

While the attempt seems sincere enough, it falls short of living up to the lofty benchmarks set by the games it so wishes it could be. The action centres around slack jawed all-American Martin Mystere, a professor who's called in to help the police investigate the mysterious death of another renowned professor. Quite what Mystere's field of expertise is supposed to be is never revealed, nor is the reason why the police seem so adamant to get him involved with a murder investigation and allow him to traipse around crime scenes while removing pieces of evidence for his own off-the-book investigation. Regardless of these little plot holes, Mystere soon finds himself travelling across the world in search of answers.

Soon perhaps not being the most appropiate word, as it took me a good hour just to get past the game's opening puzzle. It sounds like a rather easy task, get clothes, find number for mechanic to get car (public transport is too good for our man Mystere) then go to the crime scene. It's all hampered by the ancient design though and the 2D backgrounds hide key items like needles in a haystack. Everything can be clicked and interacted with in some way, usually nothing more complex than activating observational comments. The problem is that key items to certain puzzles are hidden within these masses of absolutely useless and unessesary pieces of tat, so well in fact that most of the time spent on the game will be devoted almost entirely on clicking things, with only a smigeon actually spent doing anything constructive.

It doesn't help that the majority of the puzzles also lack the creativity that the likes of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle once exhibited, reaching such depths of mundanity that at times its easy to confuse Crime Stories with a cure for insomnia than an actual adventure game. Click box on donkey, donkey kicks box, get record out of box, give to music obsessed street peddler, get key, open door, so on and so forth. Travelling Crime Stories' pretty but pretty vacant locales is never as interesting as a game attempting to sell itself on its round the world locations should be.

Certainly there at least seems to have been some attempt to try and recreate the best of what point and click games used to do; the graphics, while stuck in a time warp, are colourful enough, and the whole game doesn't take itself too seriously, although it lacks the kind of humour that once made Lucasarts games so compelling. Still, these features are too often outnumbered by the very worst this type of game has always suffered from.

It also follows a current trend with games I've had to review lately where the voice acting has been decidedly below par. While I can accept that certain game developers couldn't afford A-list celebrities to voice their characters and instead have to settle for the 'guy torn off the street corner' approach, the dialogue is often and for no clear reason cut mid sentence, reducing most of what's said into a string of unintentionally hilarious vocal engagements. To its credit, it is more entertaining listening to these broken strands of voice acting than it is playing the actual game.

And that's Crime Stories biggest folly; it's just not fun. There's nothing remotely interesting to keep you engaged for long periods of time, certainly not long enough to stick with it to the end and the ancient and poorly designed levels combined with some of the most tedious puzzles I've ever had to endure make for a well meaning but entirely failed venture. There's a reason we abandonded the incessant point & click craze of the older days for the freedom offered with modern 3D adventure games and Crime Stories is a clear reminder of why those days are long forgotten.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).