As pretentious and half-baked as the novel that inspired it.
Alas, "The DaVinci Code" is just as half-assed on the PS2 as it was in print.
In the game you play as the team of Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveau as they unravel the "mysteries" of DaVinci's legacy. This material follows the book in the basic plot but it does have new additions to keep things fresh.
The puzzles are the games highlight and they're okay, but nothing special. The cut-scenes are completely dull snore fests of blatant exposition and go on for what feels like forever. In addition to puzzles, you can also sneak around and knock out guards. You can do this with or without a blunt object to whack them with. The game tells you to use a weapon to increase your chances of laying out your target, but, alas the opposite seemed to be true in practice. Everytime I whacked a guard barehanded, he dropped and everytime I hit him with something he just turned around and attacked.
The combat for dealing with guards is excrutiatingly bad. The Rock-Paper-Scissors combo system made me long for the clunky combat controls of a Resident Evil game. It's also hard to tell how much health you have left or how close you are to beating your enemy.
The graphics and sound are good and the enivornements, especially the renditions of the art pieces are well done. But the gameplay is clunky all around. No matter which character you're currently controlling, your partner is likely to get in your way and refuse to move.
Die-hard fans of Brown's novel may find something to like here, but if you aren't in love with the potboiler prosed consiracy theories of the original, all thats left is a frustrating adventure/puzzle game.