The Omega Stone begins with famed archaeologist Sir Gil Blythe Geoffreys introducing you to his latest dig site. As a beautiful full motion video plays back, Sir Gil tells you that there's a greater mystery afoot, which he hopes you'll find the clues necessary to solve it. He explains that he's not only found the Lost Ark of the Covenant, but also a mysterious scroll, which he needs you to research further, and hopes this will lead you to solving the greater mystery of the Omega.

Once the video clip finishes, it's up to you to start exploring. To move around and interact with your environment, you just point your mouse in a direction and click, which causes the computer to redraw your location in the level. The point-and-click method is also how you'll handle examining artifacts and picking up objects. The cursor, when hovered over an actionable item, will change to signify exactly what will happen when you click. As you cursor over a wall etching, for example, the cursor becomes a magnifying glass so that you can get a close up view of the etching. As another example, when the cursor becomes a backpack, clicking the mouse button causes you to pick up the item highlighted and add it to your inventory. Your inventory is called up by clicking the right mouse button, then scrolling to the item you need. This point-and-click control scheme, while limited in its depth, makes getting into The Omega Stone easy for players of all skill levels.

In The Omega Stone, you're going to be visiting several locations around the world, including Stonehenge, the Egyptian Sphinx, Chichen Itza and Easter Island. Each locale features unique areas to explore and mysteries to solve. The puzzles you'll have to solve at each location are not easy, and require you do a lot of reading, photographing and searching around each location. If you're expecting a quick adventure, you'll be surprised to find that The Omega Stone is going to eat several hours, if not days, of your time.

To say The Omega Stone is visually stunning is an understatement. The beautifully rendered 3-dimensional landscapes and levels look fantastically realistic. Other than the occasional bouts of blurriness, there's nothing negative I can say about the graphics. At times, the game will mix live actors into the computer-generated environments, and even this looks nice and fluid, with very little of the "blue screen" effect you'd expect to see at moments like this.

The sound in this game is only so-so, with a limited and rather repetitive soundtrack, and a handful of generic sounds. The voice acting, however, is top notch, ensuring that you'll hear every verbal cue and spoken clue when you're listening to characters in the game.

While the sound in The Omega Stone won't win any awards, it certainly won't offend gamers in any way either. It's middle of the road stuff that does just fine in an adventure title.

Once you're finished The Omega Stone, you probably won't pick it up again. That's not to say that this is a bad or boring game, quite the opposite, it's just that it is very linear, and there are no hidden goodies to unlock, which might make you, come back for more. The basic story is strong enough so that you will, however, want to play the game from start to finish, so you will get your money's worth from it.

I'll be honest, adventure titles aren't quite my cup of tea as I demand a little action every now and again during a game. However, my personal tastes shouldn't prevent you from checking out Riddle of the Sphinx II: The Omega Stone, as it is a fantastically well-done adventure title. More like a learning experience than a game, it should easily please the adventure buffs out there (and maybe some parents hoping to slip a more educational title into their kid's gaming lives.)