Aura 2: The Sacred Rings PC Review San Jose CA

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If you dig a little deeper than the large budget mainstream console port riddled surface of PC gaming, you will come across genres that were around in the early years that are still flourishing. Genres like the point-n-click adventure game genre, which is going as strong as ever if you look hard enough - it's just not at the forefront of PC gaming anymore, what with all these new fangled 3D graphics and gamepads. One of the forces behind many of today's adventure titles for the PC is publisherThe Adventure Company and recently they teamed up with developer Streko Graphics to update the Aura series with Aura 2: The Sacred Rings - a game that embodies adventure gaming traditions well, although perhaps a little too well.

Aura 2 is really not a game that will blow you away at all - the moment your are graced by the low resolution and plain looking main menu that could have been designed in Word, you know you're not exactly in for PC gaming's epic hit of the season. It also becomes abundantly clear after the introductory movie sequence that you're probably going to be in for a reasonably generic storyline too, featuring the usual magical artifacts of power, the evil force trying to obtain this power, and "thechosen one" who has to save the world himself - i.e. you. Don't get too discouraged though, as there is some quality to be had with Aura 2 - for some people at least.

One of the first things you'll notice about Aura 2 is it's a point-n-click adventure game to the absolute core. While you can pan around most environments like you are looking at a 3D world, the graphics in Aura 2 are very much pre-rendered which means you can only move in areas that the game has artwork for, so put away your WASD keys as there is absolutely no freedom of movement here at all. Everything is done with your mouse in Aura 2, from moving to the next area to picking up objects and activating puzzles.

Unlike a lot of adventure games which follow this style, Aura 2 is played from a first person perspective meaning you never see your character during actual gameplay. This is not necessarily a bad thing but personally I prefer having a camera view that is further out so I can see more of the environment at a time. Also, having a third person perspective would have forced Aura 2 to render the movements your character makes which I would have preferred over the game's actual method of rendering movement- not showing it all. When you move from one area to another in Aura 2, you just spawn at the new spot like you walked through a teleporter.