Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle (PC Review)

Introduction

I'm a big fan of point-and-click adventures and have been ever since I first played the original Monkey Island some 20+ years ago. Sadly the genre is no longer a mainstay of video gaming, with new releases few and far between, so when I heard about Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle - a new piratically themed point-and-click adventure - I immediately rushed out to buy it.

What follows is my (admittedly amateur) review of the PC version. Read on, me hearties, to see how she fared!

Graphics, Sound and Presentation

Captain Morgane is a beautiful looking game. All the backgrounds, locations and objects are hand drawn and displayed in full HD resolution. Simply sumptuous. All the characters are in 3D, nicely modelled and animated and fit nicely into the game world.

On the whole, the voice acting is pretty good. All of the main characters have a lot to say, so it's good that none of them are too annoying. Some of the minor characters could have used a bit more refinement and polish, but again non of them are irritating to the point of switching the sound off. The music is pretty nice too, featuring some laid back Caribbean beats and rhythms.

Presentation is generally good throughout. I did notice some minor glitches - such as lines being voiced by the wrong character and one occasion where returning to a location and performing a specific action caused a character who wasn't even present to voice a concern about a previously dealt with situation, but these were minor and didn't cause the game to break.

Story and Puzzles

Point-and-click adventures rely on having an engaging story and decent puzzles. Happily, Captain Morgane does pretty well on both fronts.

The story is a nice, light-hearted, coming of age tale dealing with loss, grief, friendship and adventure on the quest for the Golden Turtle. The story is not perhaps quite as memorable as the Broken Sword games, but the main characters are nicely rounded and likeable and the plot is intriguing enough to keep you involved. If I had one complaint it would be that for a tale involving pirates there's not all that much piracy involved!

The game has a lot of puzzles, most of which can be solved in a fairly logical manner. It's difficult to quantify how hard most of them are, but suffice it to say that I only got completely stuck a couple of times and needed to go away and think through a solution. There certainly wasn't anything like the Chess puzzle from Shadow of the Templars, but your mileage may vary. On the plus side, though, it was still very rewarding experience.

Final Thoughts and Score 

I very much enjoyed Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle. It's a charming, and often humorous, adventure game which kept my interest throughout. The box claims to have 12 hours of story and gameplay, and I think that's pretty accurate - I managed to complete it in just over 13 hours - which is very good value for money.

If you like point-and-click adventure games I'd highly recommend you to get this one. I am hopeful the game does well enough to warrant a sequel.

Score: 9/10

Captain Morgane is available from Amazon.co.uk for PC, PS3, Wii and Nintendo DS. Get your copy here: Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle (PC DVD)