Platforms: PC, Wii, Nintendo DS. Nina from the original Secret Files: Tunguska is back for a brand new adventure.
The first Secret Files game was an enjoyable timewaster, and the sequel follows in its tracks. Nina Kalenkov returns, this time accompanied by Max (ex-boyfriend this time around) and two additional playable characters.
The story is all new and fairly unrelated to the original game. Humanity is bewildered by a series of natural disasters that has struck the planet in a short amount of time, and doomsday prophets rise up to congregate the masses. As you would expect, not all is what it seems to be and our female protagonist is about to stumble into a wicked conspiracy that need to be unraveled.
Dusty Old Parchments and Cold-Blooded Murder
The adventure game starts with the murder of a holy man, lousy weather and dusty old parchments. Not before long, the player is entangled in an adventure that spans jungle ruins, cruise ships, and the rain-soaked streets of Paris. There are a few memorable scenes, but it never gets overly engrossing. Each environment contains a number of scenes with clues and likely and unlikely solutions to the mysteries you encounter in this adventure game.
As usual you have to go over the environs with a fine-tooth comb for items and clues that you need to solve the puzzles of Secret Files 2. Some of them are a bit too farfetched, and it often takes a fair amount of trial and error before you figure out that it was indeed the handkerchief, the rat and the beer bottle that needed to be combined to solve the riddle. But that’s also the charm of adventure games.
A Good but not Great Adventure Game
The game’s story is fairly interesting, but there’s never any real tension build-up. Sometimes the secrets are revealed too soon and there are relatively few big surprises. Without revealing too much it does build up towards the end though. It helps that Nina is a well developed character with a sense of humor.
In spite of some shortcomings, Secret Files 2 is still a fun and enjoyable game. The interface is very intuitive bordering on brilliant and the (optional) feature that helps point out all the clickable items in the environments is a huge timesaver. As it’s not a resource-intensive game, Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis can be played even on an old computer. For the same reason it doesn’t bring a lot of eye-popping special effects to the screen, but it’s still a good-looking game by any standards.
