Title: Druuna: Morbus Gravis
Genre: Adventure
Big Word: Saggy
Strap: Morbus Gravis means "severe disease". Or "chronically depressed gamepad".

Boobies. That should have caught your eye, standing out on the page in big black letters, causing you to read on. Which appears to be rather the direction Artematica have gone in with their desperate attempts to get you to pick up a copy of this dismal drivel.

The classic 1980’s comic, Heavy Metal, was the original home of the eponymous Druuna – a character famous for spending a quite remarkable amount of her time without her clothes. And it is in minimal clothing that she appears on the front cover of the box – ripped bra, and unzipped skin-tight jeans. Presumably the thinking is: I can almost see her pants, I’d better buy the game. However, I would like to do my very best to talk you out of such a decision. Yes, I know, bras and pants can appear rather enticing (unless you are a girl, in which case they are merely clothing), but give me a chance to move you past this immediate pubescent reaction.

The idea is a fabulous one: Druuna is in a catatonic state, wired up to a computer that can read her memories. You are to access these, and play through them, changing the previous reality so that the paralysing horror inside her is removed. Make her too upset, scared, or endangered, and you’ll get booted out of the memory, having to start it again. Successfully change things in one memory, and then access new parts of her mind…

Altogether now: BUT!…

Intense confusion reigns supreme. After an opening sequence featuring repeated gratuitous close-ups of various parts of Druuna’s naked anatomy, the view eventually settles on the bank of computer screens from which you are supposedly able to access the rest of the game. Unfortunately, none of them are labelled in any form, and the manual manages to make things more muddled. After quitting once by mistake, I found myself staring at a sort of close up of a brain, which, after I accidentally clicked down, took me to what appeared to be a point-n-click adventure! Which doesn’t explain the six CDs and 3GB+ install.

Druuna isn’t any point-n-click. You wander the scantily clad heroine about, suffering endless, pointless pre-rendered cut-scenes, picking up an object if your lucky, and then walk near stuff that the object might be used upon. Honestly, that’s it. You don’t have a "use" button. You don’t have the choice about what to do with what you find. Nothing. You just wander around, dying ALL THE TIME FOR NO REASON. ARGH! It’s so infuriating.

It’s massively annoying that such a good idea for an adventure should have been put into such a lazy and appalling game. And no, it /really/ isn’t worth it for seeing the naked cartoon lady.

Margin Note: