Mediocre?You gotta be kidding,Mr. Gamespot!This is the best point and click adventure ever and the Ps version is great!
All in this adventure is perfect and the Playstation version is even better than the dos version to me, due to the clearer picture, better colors (thanks to Ps alpha blending) and pretty higher resolution, also you can play it in front of a big screen with the joypad relaxed in your couch instead of being with back hunched on the desk, or if you can't give up on the mouse, you can even use the Sony Playstation official mouse (which I have and it works perfectly with a lot of other Ps games) keeping it close to you thanks to its longest wire.
The story is enthralling and well told with a very fine screenplay and script and the Italian dubbing is simply awesome!
Some puzzles are quite hard but each of them has its logic (not like the Lucas adventures which I don't like at all, that are often so illogical and silly to become boring) and the many conversations are always interesting and stimulating.
All the characters are genially conceived and their bitmap animations (proportioned sprites perfectly integrated in the 2d hand-drawn state of the art backgrounds wings) are simply stunning, consisting in a lot of frames each one again hand-drawn (no mocap or rotoscope) and extremely smooth and maniacally detailed.
The musical soundtrack is orchestral and like in a film duly comments the several scenes with the adequate mood.
Unavoidably you'll become a fond fan of the series while playing and even more after having completed this fantastic journey with George and Nico in Paris and other countries around the world.
Too bad that, besides the 2nd chapter, Smoking Mirror, that is still a very good game, but definitely inferior (the story is pretextual, in the intentions of Cecil it was thought as more carefree, hilarious than mysterious and with tones less gloomy than the crepuscolar Bs1, but fatally often falls in the ridiculous, some riddles become out of context,uselessly hard and some others extremely illogical) the sequels will progressively more disappoint you and make you understand and sanction the greatness of this first, Shadow of the Templars.
A rare pearl in the Playstation gameteque, absolutely not to be missed!