A point-and-click comeback, Secret Files: Tunguska. Before I begin let me restate, this is a point-and-click adventure game. If you didn't enjoy games like Myst, Siberia, or The Longest Journey, feel free to stop reading now.

Secret Files, is your traditional point-and-click, hereafter referred to as PAC. That meaning you go from scene to scene collecting items, to figure out puzzles, to solve a mystery. It's a game where *gasp* you'll have to use your brain! At least for the first half of the game anyway.

In Secret Files you play as Nina, who one day finds her father missing. You must find various clues as to where he has been taken and who did the taking. The story actually pans out along the lines of The Da Vinci Code, what with big cover ups, secret societies, and shadowy figures, all of which surround one main event. The Tunguska incident of 1908, look it up. As Nina you will also team up with a number of extra characters, some of which you'll control, and they all have some sort of relationship to the missing professor.

Game play is pretty self-explanatory when it comes to Secret Files. It's a PAC game, guess what you'll be doing a lot of. For the majority of the game the puzzles are pretty straight forward, even clever at some points. Basically you have to collect objects and combine them to fulfill tasks so you can further the plot. Unfortunately because the plot is everything and clues come from what you hear in the game, every character has to say every thought that comes into their head. This would be so bad if there were any decent actors in the entire game.

For the first half of the game it is relatively obvious as to how you are supposed to use the items you acquire. I felt particularly clever when I taped my cell phone to a cat so I could listen in on a conversation. Yes you read that right. But at some point in the game the manner at which you complete your tasks goes from sensible to "how the hell was I supposed to get that?". Such as putting a spike through a painting to keep a door open. Oh yeah that's completely logical. Games like this is why we have Gamefaqs.

Secret Files isn't much to look at either, not that it has to be though. Your character moves across the, although pretty, static background looking for clues and helpful items. But is a run feature a little too much to ask for, the characters move so slowly across the screen. The cut scenes are visually pleasing but still feel sluggish. This is prevalent even when the scene is supposed to be heavily climactic. Oh and a little more animation with the characters would be nice. There is nothing worse in the game then during conversation portions where two or three characters are just standing there without so much as a gesture.

I'll toss Secret Files a generous 7 out of 10, but this one goes back in the file cabinet for me, and not even a fire proof one.