What happens when a mediocre adventure game meets mediocre appraisal and a mediocre reception from the gaming public? Well, a sequel is released of course! Some may wonder why, but then you only really have to look at the sputtering state of the adventure genre to realise that in this parched land, anything even moderately successful is worth perpetuating. Hence, allow me to present to you Secret Files 2. That's the sequel to... Secret Files: Tunguska. Oh, you guessed already!

You play the same lead character, Nina Kalenkov, as she unearths a mystery whilst aboard a luxury cruise ship. Expect lots of parchment, prophecy and end of the world drama to prop up the plotline. You will also get to play as several characters throughout the course of the game, as there are two main stories that interweave into the overall plot, which should make for an interesting feature if implemented properly.

The environments of Secret Files 2 are well detailed, with moderately impressive graphics that create some believable locations. There are still restrictions on this however, with 3D illusions rendered using multiple 2D sliding planes - but it's still an improvement on most point and click games in the genre, so we won't turn up our noses at that. Also, the game reuses the innovative feature that heralds the end of fruitless screen-sweeping for hotspots, namely a button you push that highlights everything in the current scene that you can interact with. Die-hards may call this a bit of a cheat, but to everyone else it is a godsend, allowing you to focus on solving puzzles rather than straining your eyes to find non-existent miniscule clues everywhere. Besides, it's not as though you have to use it if you don't want to!

Secret Files 2 starts at a relatively easy difficulty level, which actually has something to do with common sense and logic, quite rare commodities for an adventure game. This should become a little harder as you progress through the game, hopefully maintaining that fine balance between challenge and ludicrous near-impossibility. A small niggle I had with the preview build was the ridiculous speech reasoning on what your character should take or interact with. For instance, Nina is in a hallway and you ask her to take a newspaper, but she refuses, saying that the other passengers might want to read it too. How thoughtful. Then you ask her to take an antique oar from a cabinet display above the newspaper and she happily obliges without the slightest protest! Then you ask her to take the painting on the wall nearby and she makes a great big fuss, calling you a thief, and how she shouldn't take things that don't belong to her. These are small niggles, but just reflective of a slight lack of forethought and consistency in the game.

Secret Files 2 does improve some of the minor quibbles raised against its forbear however; they're just little tweaks but they do improve the gameplay significantly. Your inventory is now no longer fixed and hides itself when not being used, while the in-game interaction and cut scenes are handled with a bit more panache this time around. The voice acting is good too, and although there are currently a few small issues with character speech animation you can expect these to be ironed out in time for the game's release in 2008.

Secret Files 2 looks like it will provide some decent adventure game entertainment and is already looking quite polished. Whether it will be a masterpiece or another also-ran remains to be seen, but judging by the improvements we've seen so far, it certainly has a fair chance at attaining greatness - check back in a few months to find out in our full review.

Previewed by Adam Shirley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).