Fans of old-school adventure games are a cultish sort. The slightest mention of King’s Quest or Monkey Island will always result in a lengthy diatribe about how the genre has died off since the golden age of point-and-click.

Just a few minutes with recently released sci-fi noir game Gemini Rue should illustrate that the classic formula of collecting inventory items and solving esoteric puzzles still works.

You start the game as Azriel Odin, an assassin-turned-cop on a mission to save his brother from forces unseen. He’s got a gun, a cellphone and an inventory full of threats. Using them all, as well as the objects and clues he finds within the dismal planet Barracus, Odin gradually unravels the mysteries surrounding himself and the shady characters within his orbit. You’ll also be given control of Delta-Six, an amnesiac trapped inside a prisonlike hospital, whose past is inextricably linked to Odin’s.

It’s a dark, captivating story that evokes memories of Blade Runner and Shadowrun, with a thrilling final sequence and quite a few disturbing moments.

Since Gemini Rue is a classic point-and-click adventure, you’ll spend the bulk of your time interacting with the environment in order to solve puzzles. Most of these puzzles involve simple object-on-object contact: Use a screwdriver to open a steel grating, move a crate to climb a ladder.

Some puzzles involve conversation skills; you’ll have to navigate dialog trees and figure out the right way to talk to certain people in order to proceed.

A handful of more-unique puzzle designs keeps things from feeling too old-school. There’s a machine that requires you to turn pipes on and off in the proper order, and a frantic space-navigation sequence in which you have to guide your ship to a distant blinking light.

As appropriate to the theme, Gemini Rue even features a spattering of gunfights. Unfortunately, these don’t work as well as the rest of the game’s mechanics. Due to the clunky, keyboard-based control scheme and the fact that you can hide behind an object for cover with no real time limit, the shootouts are the most boring part of Gemini Rue. At least there are only a few of them.

Some technical glitches also break the game’s flow. At times, the cinematic story scenes will stop abruptly or otherwise transition in an awkward way. Other times, you might run into a glitch that forces you to reload to an earlier save point. (Save early, save often, as the saying used to go.)

Still, Gemini Rue stands out among the throng of generic point-and-click adventure games. The atmosphere remains tense and dark throughout the entire game, and when you finally plow through the story’s last couple of twists, you’ll be glad you played the whole thing.

WIRED Some tricky puzzles. Gripping narrative. Short but satisfying experience.

TIRED Several game-breaking bugs. Gunfights feel broken. Story sometimes seems disjointed.

$15, Wadjet Eye Games

Rating:

Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.

Image courtesy Wadjet Eye Games