Belief & Betrayal (PC)

Reviewed by

Brett Todd

on 07/08/2008

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Page 2

The gameplay isn't any more impressive than the story and acting. Belief & Betrayal is a traditional adventure in every way, which means that it looks and plays like a game from a decade ago. You guide 3D protagonists through 2D screens, pointing and clicking to look at and manipulate objects just as in Sierra's classic adventures from the late 1990s. Visuals appear to date from that era as well. The game is locked in 1024x768 resolution, which leaves it blurry and pixelated on a modern widescreen monitor. Even worse, most screens are impenetrably murky. Quest items are hidden away in dark corners and are often impossible to discover without guiding the cursor through pixel hunts. The sheer annoyance of having to scroll around looking for a needle in a haystack results in a great deal of tedium. These searches are made even more frustrating due to the way that just about all of the game's screens are cluttered with a half-dozen or more objects that serve no purpose but to waste your time and provide Danter with the opportunity to make another inane wisecrack.

Cue the standard awful Christian secret.

Even when you can locate vital items, the game doesn't provide a great deal of feedback letting you know how to use them, or even if they are useable. You frequently need to click on points of interest two or three times to find a hidden object, and many times you're not given any clues that such multiple clicks would be rewarding. Near the end of the second chapter, for instance, Danter finds a pile of rubbish in a London alleyway that conceals a bottle of wine. But you won't find this out by clicking on the pile once, twice, or even thrice. You have to incessantly click on it to get beyond Danter's initial "ew, I'm not sticking my hands in there" reaction, and then click again to prompt him to start kicking the rubbish more than once. Only then is the bottle of wine revealed. This is probably the most extreme example of this missing feedback issue in action, although you will frequently wander by important objects due to the absence of even the slightest hint that you're on the right track. Anyone who finishes this game without a walk-through deserves some kind of cash prize.

The only really noteworthy feature of Belief & Betrayal is its occasionally controversial storyline, but even the revelations that it holds about "the very foundations of the Church" aren't going to wow anyone these days. Couple this been-there, done-that vibe with an infuriating lead character and tedious gameplay and you've got a recipe for making sure that these ancient Christian secrets stay hidden.