Ankh: Curse of the Scarab King

The wonderful thing about this world is that it's packed with variety. Just as different cultures exhibit preferences for ethnically diverse food, clothing and music, the same is true of the videogames they play. Japanese gamers are traditionally fond of RPG epics, 2D fighters and 2D shooters while their American counterparts tend to have a heavy preference for first-person adventures, sports titles and real-time strategy games.

We Europeans usually follow the lead of our American cousins but one country stands out as having a particularly unique taste in videogames: Germany. The point-and-click adventure, so successfully popularized by LucasArts in the '90s, remains a massively admired genre in this region, with German gamers seemingly unable to get enough of a genre that is largely (and some would argue unfairly) forgotten elsewhere in the world.

Ankh: The Curse of the Scarab King is just one example of our Germanic neighbours taking the humble point-and-click adventure and making it their own. Based on the 2006 PC title (which in turn is a sequel to a crusty old Acorn Academies release from '98) Ankh: CotSK valiantly attempts to shoehorn the sights, sounds and experiences of a bustling historic Cairo into the modest confines of a DS cartridge, with varying degrees of success.

The DS hardware is well-suited to this kind of caper; using the stylus in the same way you would use a mouse, it's blissfully easy to guide Egyptian protagonist Assil around the arid environs he finds himself in, and the use of on-screen icons makes up for the fact that the interface naturally lacks the dual mouse buttons one would expect to find on a PC.

For example, to look at something you merely have to highlight the 'eye' icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and then tap it. Likewise, should you wish to interact, pick up or talk to anything, selecting the relevant icon beforehand makes it possible. It's a simplistic method of control to be sure, but it works wonderfully and you have to wonder why other point-and-click adventures haven't made the transition to Nintendo's handheld.

For those of you with some kind of aversion to using the touch-screen (and we expect there aren't many of you about, given that it's one of the DS's major selling points) the D-pad is also supported, but it's much easier to move Assil around using the stylus – you merely tap where you want him to go, and he walks there. There are odd occasions where he'll become trapped behind scenery but for the most part his path-find abilities are sound.

Sadly, in the process of porting the 2006 PC title to the DS, sacrifices have had to be made. The original game took place in full 3D, and quite attractive it was too. Naturally, it would be foolish to expect the DS to match this graphical splendour given its modest capabilities, so the developer has decided to use flat backgrounds and sprites, adopting a top-down perspective.

Some attempt has been made to maintain a degree of parity with the PC version, however; there are numerous cut scenes - usually activated whenever Assil speaks to someone or performs a significant task - that play out in video format. These scenes are actually lifted directly from the PC version but they're heavily compressed, lacking colour, clarity and smooth animation - drawbacks caused by obvious limitations of the DS cartridge format. (It's interesting to compare this approach with that of the wonderful Professor Layton, which didn't ask half as much of the format).

However, one aspect of Ankh: CotSK that instantly impresses is the dialogue - every line in the game is spoken, albeit in quite low-quality (again, a necessary evil given the meagre storage space). The voice acting is actually pretty decent, too, although the script is often clumsy and jokes fall flat on more than one occasion. We can only assume that something has been lost during the translation from German to English.

That's not to say the game isn't funny in parts. In one conversation, an inquisitive Assil asks if it's possible to die in the game, to which the other character replies that the developer has followed the lead of LucasArts' classic adventures, so death simply isn't a possibility. This humorous conversation also betrays the developer's key inspiration – Ankh: CotSK owes a massive debt to the output of the aforementioned American adventure maker.

LucasArts's titles are famous for their obscure and often downright nonsensical puzzles, and Ankh: CotSK certainly follows suit in that regard.

However, the conundrums are rendered even more frustrating due to awkward transition from PC to DS; in the PC original, it was relatively easy to identify objects of interest in your surroundings thanks to the high resolution display and the use of 3D graphics, but because the DS version employs a 2D viewpoint with rather washed-out and ill-defined visuals, it's often extremely hard to see what you can interact with, or even ascertain what a particular object is.

A shining example of this takes place in the first room you enter, where it's necessary to utilize a piece of scenery that looks entirely innocuous on the DS's small screen.

Ankh: CotSK is ultimately a brave attempt to bring the PC original to the DS in a manner that not only caters for the machine's unique features but keeps the allure of the original game alive. The number of animated cut scenes and sheer amount of speech is undeniably impressive, but the game is hampered by the fact that the new 2D viewpoint makes solving some of the trickier puzzles even harder.

Nevertheless, if you're a fan of the genre and have patiently been waiting for point-and-click title that very nearly reaches the heights of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, then this is likely to bring a smile to your face.