Belief & Betrayal
Preview
Grizzly murders cut down the agents of the Vatican secret service
by Marko Susimetsä
previewed on PC
Ah, the joys of point&click (cont.)
For the most part, the puzzles are said to be easy enough for beginners and relatively sensible – no such illogical solutions that you found in these types of games in the early days (eat the ham in the fridge in order to find a lockpick etc.). Mainly, you may expect to 'fix' certain mechanisms by rearranging gears or finding out codes to open locks etc. And the beginner-friendliness does not end there. You will be able to hit the spacebar in order to immediately see all the objects in the present scene that you can interact with.
Friends are known in need
Fortunately to Jo, he is not alone in trying to solve this gruesome mystery. His friends will include Katrin 'Cat' McKendal, who is an expert in ancient languages and is readily reached with Jon's communicator/cellphone. Not only you get to send mysterious passages of ancient texts for Cat to solve, but you will also be able to control Cat's character to solve some parts of the mystery from her perspective. Similarly, you can take advantage of the computer proves of Damien (what a name to choose for a character in this kind of an adventure, eh?) to surpass more technical problems. Both of these characters (and some others, such as Cat's father) belong to an organisation called Legacy – which is presumably the organisation that also hired Jon's uncle.
Graphics and sounds
Graphics and sounds often take the back seat when it comes to point&click adventure games. However, in Belief & Betrayal, you will be pleasantly surprised by the graphics. Certainly they are nothing like the best next-gen graphics that you see, but, being static, they are pretty good for a game in this genre. The animations of the German version are also serviceable, although the characters tend to ski on the floors as they walk and have a tendency to repeat the same gestures and motions, such as scratching their neck, several times a minute. This becomes painfully obvious in an early scene where Jon talks with an officer inside the Scotland Yard.
When it comes to the music, you will be treated to some pretty good melodies, especially when it comes to scenes involving the church. But some of the music is also very grating. I was about ready to turn the sounds completely off when studying Jon's apartment in New York with a constant blast of something that might have been jazz playing in the background.
It remains to be seen if these aspects of the game will also be changed for the English language version of the game. The time that the so-called translation is taking indicates that the game may well be improved in some areas at the same time.
Cut to the chase
Indeed, Belief & Betrayal will probably be a worthy purchase to anyone loving traditional adventure games, although one may well ask why these sorts of games still use static environs for the characters to walk in, rather than taking some lessons from your generic FPS games. It cannot be that hard to build beautiful settings in 3D nowadays. However, what time the developers have saved in “level creation”, they have certainly made up in building a good mystery story for the gamers to enjoy. I bet it will be even more exciting when I can actually understand the dialogue... But, naturally, we are looking forward to the release of the English language demo to see if the game has changed from the earlier versions.
