The Secrets of Atlantis is, at its heart, a very ordinary adventure game. It has a fairly by-the-numbers plot, the usual mixed bag of puzzles, and characters that are neither entirely memorable nor completely forgettable. If its developers had been smart, they would’ve been content with mediocrity, quietly fading away into the night after providing the gaming world with yet another shrug-worthy adventure title.

Instead, they tinkered with the formula, adding in elements they more than likely thought would provide a fresh take on an established genre. The result is a game whose tedium is broken up only by pockets of frustration, forcing the player not to root for the heroes, but rather to hope they fall screaming into an active volcano. That, unlike the gameplay, might at least be somewhat satisfying.

You play as Howard Brooks, an aeronautical engineer who is enlisted by an eccentric bazillionaire to scour the world for a set of medallions that will ultimately lead the way to Atlantis. The guy with the cash, philanthropist that he is, is simply interested in the lost city’s history, but the group of nefarious no-gooders on your tail is just in it for the money.

The Secrets of Atlantis will likely turn you off before you find out even that much about your fate, however. For starters, our “hero”, Brooks, is a bland and boring lump whose only perceivable personality trait is that he’s a complete horndog. Although we’re clearly supposed to see him as an everyman who has been caught up in events bigger than he is, we’re never given a single reason to care about him or his quest. The characters he runs into are, for the most part, equally pointless, little more than scenery that speaks. They’re not interesting; they’re not annoying, they’re just kind of there, waiting for you to click through their dialog trees.

As with most adventure games the puzzles of Atlantis are meant to be the stars of the show, but they’re not given much opportunity to shine. Some of them flirt with creativity, others are old adventure-game standbys, but no matter what their particular quality, the game almost always tries to get in the way of your ability to solve them. Take, for example, the simple sliding-tile puzzle that blocks your way to the cashier at the casino in Macao. Putting aside for a moment what a hassle it must be to have to do a puzzle every time you want to get into your office, the task itself is a relatively straightforward affair…or would be, if it weren’t for the fact that the casino’s bouncer will look your way every so often, and if you don’t stop what you’re doing and walk away, he’ll throw you off the boat. As you ponder the idea that someone, somewhere, actually thought that interrupting your puzzle-solving for a pointless meander around the roulette wheel every three minutes actually upped the fun factor, you may again find your thoughts straying to that active volcano.

Another particular quirk of The Secrets of Atlantis is that it requires you do perform your actions in a very specific order, preventing you from proceeding until you jump through the appropriate hoops. Normally, this isn’t such a big deal—in fact, it’s an easy way for games to make sure that you don’t accidentally paint yourself into a corner, rendering the game unplayable. “I can’t do that now” or “Hmmm…this needs something” are fairly common ways for adventure games to let you know that you’re on the right track; you just haven’t connected quite the right dots yet. Atlantis feels no need for such pleasantries, and will happily let you wander around for hours until you get it all exactly right, leading to endless backtracking, random clicking, and guesswork as to just how the game wants you to proceed. Perhaps they thought it would make the game more challenging? Perhaps they felt their narrative was so obvious that no-one would ever stray from it? Perhaps they simply didn’t play-test it enough? Perhaps…the game is simply best avoided?

Also hamstringing your efforts to solve the puzzles is the uncooperative and overly swimmy camera, which swings wildly back and forth, entirely too sensitive and surprisingly likely to give you a land-based case of mal de mer. After playing through a few hours of Atlantis, you may begin to believe that the careening camera was a carefully calculated maneuver to distract you from the fact that the characters in the game are all universally hideous. With their thin-lipped wide smiles and unnatural cheekbones, they sort of resemble department store mannequins that have been through a fire and started to melt. Fortunately, there aren’t too many of them; Atlantis’ locations are largely empty, with a minimum of details and decorations. One silver lining to the emptiness of the environments is that at least you know for sure if someone is around, you’re going to need their help solving a puzzle.