Secret Files 3 Review

  

 If you had ever played Secret Files: Tunguska or Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis, then you have been expecting this game for 4 years. Like the rest of us. And you've had high expectations from it. Like everybody else in your situation. And were you happy with the final product? Well... I thought so.

Secret Files 3, previously called "The Archimedes Code" and, when it got released, simply "Secret Files 3", left me really unhappy. It's not that it didn't surpass my expectations, no, the problem is it didn't even meet them.Before this game got released, I have to admit, I was kinda eager to get my hands on it and play it. Now, after I've played it and finished it (got all four endings, by the way), I'm not that happy about it anymore.

GAMEPLAY:
Well, there's really not much to say about gameplay. The same easy controls that can be narrowed down to this sentence: Left click is the USE button and right click is the LOOK button.
Here's my first complaint: the game is too easy. Way too easy. You can actually finish it quite fast. I mean, it took me about 4 and a half hours to beat the game, and it was the first time I layed my hands on it. Considering that there are four endings and you have to load the game back to a previous state in order to reach each of them, you can get like 30 - 40 extra minutes of gameplay, but it's not that exciting, since you do the same things anyway. The major difference is in the "what came out of..." part... but this doesn't fit into gameplay, so we'll come back to it later.

Another thing about the gameplay: there are too few puzzles in the game. It focuses too much on the point'n click part. I mean, I'm OK with the story progressing fast, but I also enjoy some puzzles from time to time, and I didn't get as many as I would have wanted and some of them were quite stupid (like the submarine navigation - I mean, was it that fucking hard to let the players control the submarine with the keyboard?!). So, a big minus here.

One last complaint in gameplay and then we move on: out of three playable characters only ONE is actually doing something. Unlike in "Puritas Cordis", where the action was split between Max and Nina, here you play mostly as Nina. Max has little to no contribution to the story progression, other than being the damsel in distress several times, which kinda made me think: what if feminists took over the production team and decided to make an example out of this game?! What if they wanted to show us that men can be damsels in distress too?! And the third controllable character?! One of the bad guys, which you only use to solve ONE PUZZLE and that's it. Seriously? Why was that needed? Nina could have done that quite easily. Or Max come to think of it.

The robot fighting part. Well, that one was quite innovative and brought something fresh to the game. That one, I liked.

Also, I noticed that they missed a lot of opportunities to create puzzles or new levels. For instance, there was so many they could have done with Alcatraz. But no. It ended fast. Or they could have made you go through a whole city to find the key to something. Santorini could have been more than an underwater base. At Cern, the second time, a whole level could have been made out of Max and Nina trying to reach the control center. Even at the beginning, in Berlin, they should've extended the investigation to more locations, you know, in order to raise suspence. But they didnt. They missed a lot of opportunites to make the game better - maybe the publisher rushed them to complete the game for the scheduled release date?! Bottom line: gameplay sucks.

STORY
The story is mediocre and hardly believable. Seriously, a whole code hidden in "Pi" that leads to the creation of a machine that will destroy those who are able to create it?! Something made up by a greater entity to prevent any other beings from the galaxy from reaching a certain state of evolution?! This is all you could've come up with?! OK, it's not that bad, I mean, it takes imagination to write this crap. But I have some complaints here as well.
A major complaint is that the villains are not properly done. OK, Cunningham is OK, we know her motivation and we get to know her better. But van Rijn could have been more developed. They just used him so there was a big boss giving orders. Doesn't match the guy from SF2.
One of the main reasons I'm disappointed in the story is that they actually hired professional movie writers to come up with it. Who the hell recommended this guys to them? Uwe Boll?
Something that I found really interesting was the part with the dreams that take you back into history at the exact time you should go to. The Florence level is quite good, yet, since I saw the screenshots of Leonardo's workshop before, I knew where it was going. Anyway, if I were to choose my favorite part of the game that would be the Florence part.
One more thing about the story. There are four endings you can get, based on your actions. I replayed the game to get those endings, and I'm kinda disappointed. But that's just because I like a solid, straight to the point ending rather than the game having you choose what happens and go with the ending you like most. I'm just a player, not the one who writes a story. To me, a good story has a solid ending (even if it leaves space for interpretation, as long as you know exactly what happened to who). And this story does not have one.

SOUNDTRACK
The soundtrack is OK. This is one of the few things I enjoyed about SF3: the music. At least this part is great and it didn't disappoint.
Also, one plus to the game for having finally solved the problem of Nina's voice (terrible in SF1, too old in SF2, perfect in SF3) in the English version.

GRAPHICS:
No comment here. It's hard to rate graphics in adventure games, but I liked how everything looked and, well, I guess it deserves a plus for graphics.

OVERALL:
Overall, as I was saying, I'm finding it hard to decide whether this game is really bad or simply bad. Again, this is an opinion, and I'm saying all this stuff only because my expectations were not met. Otherwise, someone else may enjoy this game. In short: the game is not long enough, the puzzles are easy, there are a lot of wasted opportunities that would have made the game better, there is not enough dialogue in this game, the story looks as if it was written by Uwe Boll and the gameplay... well, it's the same basic gameplay.
Because there are four endings it would be hard to make another sequel to the series, because they'd have to explore one of the endings only. Or not? (Maybe inter-dimensional stuff?)
Now, a personal opinion. Something doesn't make sense to me. In two of the endings, Cunningham should not give you the antidote, since you don't technically help her get what she wants. Yet she still leaves the bag with the antidode behind anyway. I think those two endings would have worked better with Max dying. That would really have made a difference in the outcome, even though Max's death would have been another thing I would have had to criticize because it wasn't a good exit for such a character :))
One last point: NO SAM IN THIS GAME. They do apologize for it through an image in the credits, though.

SCORE:
GAMEPLAY: 4/10
STORY: 5/10
SOUNDTRACK: 9/10
GRAPHICS: 9/10
OVERALL: 6,7/10 (Slightly above average)