I admit that when I was offered the chance to preview Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis, I was fairly reluctant. I know, I know, gaming is the entertainment of the gods, lifting spirits and boosting happiness to incomprehensible levels - it's just that every point and click adventure game I've reviewed has been exactly the same as the last - slow, boring, tiresome drivel. It also didn't help that the original Secret Files failed to really set the virtual realm on fire, scoring a less than incredible 6/10. However, while playing the preview version of Secret Files 2, my view quickly changed, as I discovered that it's unusually fast paced for an adventure game and it is never the tiresome, sluggish terror that I had envisioned.

Like all adventure games, the story is deep and full of mystery, starting with confusing riddles and titbits of information, gradually unfolding until you have a complete picture of events. To give away much of this plotline at such an early stage would be blasphemy, as the underlying theme of the game is uncertainty as to what is really going on and - perhaps more importantly - what will happen next. However, I can say that the world has been shaken up, tossed and turned by natural disasters - floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions caused by global warming and other catastrophes. What if these so-called natural disasters were not natural at all, though? What if they were engineered by terrorists or a crazy secret society? It's an interesting concept and grade-A material for a mystery adventure game full of conspiracies, religious nutcases (their presence in games of this genre is compulsory) and wannabe assassins. Solving this puzzle are our old friends Nina Kalenkov and her ex-boyfriend Max from the original, along with some other people who get caught up in all the chaos.

With this possible humdinger of a story, you'll be glad to know that the gameplay stays true to the point and click mandate; you move the cursor around the screen and click on stuff to move your character. Some of the objects you click on can be interacted with, such as bookcases and toy UFOs, often revealing clues to puzzle solutions or just activating dialogue with non-playable bystanders. These 'hotspots' are highlighted by a special button on the game's interface (opened when you drag the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen), meaning you aren't left clicking at everything wildly in case you miss something - a really helpful and well conceived tool. Clicking anywhere other than these hotspots forces your character to walk (or run, if far away) as close as they can to that position. This is pretty much stating the obvious for games in this genre, though a run over long distances avoiding tiresome hikes is curiously left out of far too many adventure games, really letting them down on the gameplay front. That's already one plus point in the bag for Secret Files 2 - and luckily there are other elements that make this one of the best point and click games I've played since Myst.

Secret Files 2 is predominantly a clue-hunting and mystery-solving game, as is so often the case with the genre. It's therefore excellent to see that some degree of thought has gone into making the cases interesting and neither too hard nor too easy to complete. Each puzzle is limited to a few scenes - a few different areas that Nina or Max can enter, such as one deck of a ship or a series of rooms in a university. Solve the puzzle and you progress onto the next set of scenes (or a new puzzle with the same group). You then know that the solution to the current enigma you're trying to solve must be hidden somewhere in these scenes; maybe you simply need to find an item like a brush or perhaps you need to combine that brush with some water. The upshot is that you do not have to spend hours trekking about hopelessly from room to room - you always feel that you are making some sort of progress, narrowing your search area down until you find what you need.

These self-contained puzzle areas also imply a limited number of things to click on and interact with - bookcases to look at, objects to grab and so on. Combining this with the neat tool that highlights all the hotspots onscreen at any time means that as long as you click on all of them at least once, you can pretty much gather all the clues that you require to solve a puzzle. It's then left to your mind to knit those clues into the unbreakable web of a solution. With the web complete and the puzzle solved, you gain a wonderful confidence boost, as it was not the game that told you the solution - it just gave you all the tools you needed to discover it for yourself.

Putting you at the centre of it all and getting you to interact with things and think about the game is wonderful design - I salute the developers at Fusionsphere Systems! However, there is one minor issue that I hope is sorted before the review code comes in, and this stems from clicking on objects that can be interacted with always generating some spoken text, be it thoughts from the main character read aloud or actual conversation. The game would greatly benefit from a way to skip these ramblings, as although they are never overly long, you often click on them twice or even a third time, forcing unpleasant repetition.

The graphics on the whole are well detailed and thoroughly polished; the 3D characters all look convincing and are, for the most part, animated to perfection. I say that because while the running and walking animations are superb, the lip synching sometimes goes awry; mouths just open and close without any thought to what the character is actually saying. This underwhelming movement is often hidden behind objects (usually the character you are playing), as your view into the game world is always fixed, meaning that the lifelike 3D characters move around 2D backgrounds, giving the game a familiar '2.5D' appearance. These backdrops are well-drawn and also impressively detailed, though they are also very flat and static, leading to the characters looking as though they are walking across the set of a low-budget movie. This problem seems to fade as the game progresses, but I would definitely like to see some more animation in the background, such as birds flying or loose potatoes rolling back and forth with the sway of a ship.

The lack of background movement is certainly not a problem in the cut scenes though, which alternate between action-heavy, movie style video and in-game animations. One that I particularly enjoyed happens fairly near the beginning of the game, featuring Splinter Cell style guards by the names of Biggs and Wedge. At least one is referred to as "Red 2" and this is where I realise that the developers saw me coming. I am a huge Star Wars fan and both Biggs and Wedge are pilots from Red Squadron - the X-wing flight group that Luke Skywalker joins when he enters the Rebel Alliance. Red 2 is the callsign of Wedge Antilles and the callsign of Biggs Darklighter is Red 3. Surely this is not mere coincidence, although it very probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the game's plot, but is rather a subtle little homage to fans of the original trilogy. I've just had a terrible thought that I've exposed some hideous copyright monster, damning us all, upsetting hordes of Star Wars academics and causing unspeakable destruction as though a million voices cried out in pain and were suddenly silenced. Better get back to the game quickly, before I bring about the end of the world.

The sound is a good place to get back on the rails, as the addition of "professional voice actors" (as announced in bold letters on the official website) is a welcome one, considering the much-slated vocals of the original. In this sequel, people sound like you would expect; the elderly university scholar sounds croaky and old while a rather rude travel adviser that you meet quite early on is American, with a know-it-all aspect to his tone. It is a slight shame that there isn't much in the way of other audio effects, beyond the occasional low whir of propeller blades or the thwack of a ping-pong ball bouncing off a racket, but the game never feels dull from the lack of effects, so it's entirely forgivable. Similarly, there is not that much music, which actually aids the gameplay rather than distracting from it. For example, the music on the main menu is full of trumpets - a fitting background for the start of an adventure - but if this were to provide an audio accompaniment to the rest of the game, it would just get repetitive and irritating.

My lasting impressions of Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis are quite optimistic - extraordinarily so at times with the wonderful puzzle areas scheme, the action-heavy cut scenes (that's the way I like them!) and the splendid voice acting. There are one or two rough areas such as poor lip-synching and static backdrops, but nothing major. This is actually the best point and click adventure game I've played in years, and while it will doubtless be lost to some within the sea of its similar looking but inferior competitors, those who do take the time to investigate will likely be hooked from the moment they begin their adventure.

Previewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).