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(search on Board Game Geek) 
- Replay Value (1-10): 2
- Fun Factor (1-10): 9
- Worth Buying (1-10): 7
This is a mystery deduction game, with 15 included scenarios (so that's
pretty much the maximum number of times you can play it). The goal of each
scenario is to discover a 20-space mystery phrase. To do so, each scenario
has 10 clue cards in stacks at the four corners of the board; to view a clue
card, you must land your pawn there, take the top clue card of the stack,
and you have until either your next turn or someone else landing on the
same space to look at that card and figure out what the heck it means.
Usually, the clue card will give you a few characters in the mystery
phrase, but it will only make sense when combined with other clue cards
or by looking up reference cards, only available at the "Louvre" spaces.
This means that if you know what you're doing, you'll often find yourself
looking at a clue card, jotting notes down furiously, going to the
"Louvre library" and doing "research" to decode the clue card, then
sometimes going back and getting information from the clue card that you
didn't realize you needed. If, on the other hand, you don't really know
what you're doing, then there are these "depository" cards which allow
you to choose another player and peek at their notes.
The game can seem frustrating, because it's not unlikely for someone who
has no idea what the clues mean to play a "depository card", steal the
phrase from a good player, and close the game -- but fortunately to
mitigate this, the bonus for getting the phrase first is only 5 points.
There are then a series of 5 trivia questions after the end of the game,
each one worth 5 more points -- and each of them were answered on the clue
cards if you were actually paying attention to them. So, it really does
reward good "research" skills.
I don't think this game got a fair shake at Mind Games, mostly because
it really doesn't work unless a fair number of players "get it". Our
first game was a 90-minute plod as we went through the rules, trying to
understand them and understand the point of everything. But our second
game was this 20-minute frenzy where we were grabbing the dice and timer
back and forth, trying to hurry through turns quickly so that we could
deny other players precious clue study time. It really felt like the
fast-paced cerebral thriller that the book was supposed to be.
As a final note, I think that there are parts of this game that are a
bit fiddly and it's hard to play and manage at the same time -- if you
can afford it, I would suggest having an umpire who manages time limits,
makes sure people are taking their turns promptly, reads trivia questions,
and so on.
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