When womanising French media magnate Pierre Carchon is inexplicably murdered in his Paris home by a gun-toting mime artist, freelance photo-journalist Nicole 'Nico' Collard is quick to link his death with a mysterious spate of killings attributed to the city's notorious Costume Killer.

Soon after, American tourist George Stobbart escapes a deadly explosion at a Parisian café after witnessing a man in a clown costume running from the establishment moments before its destruction. When a shocked Nico arrives at the scene expecting to meet a phone contact with important information on the case, it becomes clear the Costume Killer has struck again and someone is keen to keep Nico away from the truth.

Thrown into a web of shadowy intrigue that hides dark answers to her probing questions, Nico is quick to enlist the help of ever-willing George and the two embark on a shared investigation that soon strikes at Nico's own heart and threatens to uncover a sinister and terrifying conspiracy.

Originally released as the first PC-based Broken Sword adventure way back in 1996, which explains why Nico and George don't recognise each other despite existing console adventures, the version of Shadow of the Templars (a.k.a. Circle of Blood) sets itself apart thanks to being labelled as 'The Director's Cut' of the classic point-and-click mystery.

This is essentially translated into an investigation-based narrative stretched beyond its original boundaries thanks to the inclusion of new Wii-specific puzzles, character conversation pop-up windows, a first-person viewpoint for certain challenges, and multiple solution pathways.

Of course, while the established point-and-click structure isn't difficult to re-create on Nintendo's home console thanks to the genre's largely basic character animations cast throughout a flat painted 2D world, the game's success or failure is likely to be gauged on how well the Wii's intuitive motion-sensing abilities are channelled in order to build on a classic adventure by accenting it with points of originality.

That transitional attempt, while certainly in evidence, is somewhat fractured insofar as the developers have obviously tried to incorporate the Wii Remote's attributes into the gameplay by aping interactions otherwise effortlessly created by a conventional computer mouse. While using the Remote to point characters towards places of interest works perfectly well, as does viewing, investigating and interacting with general on-screen objects, the Wii controller quite clearly lacks the versatility of the mouse and is found wanting whenever incremental control is required. Such shortfalls usually frustrate during puzzle tasks that involve the execution of intricate lock picking, piecing together a torn up photograph, or gently tumbling the internals of a safe.

The Wii Remote control system simply cannot convincingly cope with the demands placed upon it during challenges that require the level of sensitivity offered up by the humble computer mouse. That's not to say puzzles cannot be tackled and progress becomes bottlenecked, but an element of imminent frustration always seems to be bubbling just beneath the gameplay surface whenever tasked with creating precise movements with a cursor system that has a tendency to leap about wildly at the slightest human twitch.

While this apparent director's cut might offer a light smattering of additions when viewing it from a gameplay standpoint, updating its overall presentation seems to have been overlooked during the porting process. Indeed, the new character face windows that pop up to define who's speaking are unlikely to appease graphics whores (not least because they're static), while surrounding backgrounds and animation are functional as best and all-too often magnify the 13 years that have passed since the original Shadow of the Templars was released. Granted, the Wii lacks enough processing muscle to rival its market competitors in the aesthetic stakes, but it can certainly push out considerably more eye candy than this particular game delivers - and, as such, publisher should have made sure a step up was clearly evident.