Since I’ve been on a mystery/detective game kick lately, I’ve been thinking about what I really want from a detective game. Many years ago, I tried several of the Sherlock Holmes games by Frogwares. They were highly-esteemed, and while I don’t particularly like Sherlock Holmes, that was all that was available at the time. Oh, and the Ace Attorney games, but I did not gel with those when I tried them out. Maybe I’d like them better now, but I’m skeptical. In fact, one of the things introduced in the third chapter of Murders on the Yangtze River (OMEGAMES STUDIO) is debating. That’s when the accused person gets to debate you and say why you’re wrong. Again, it doesn’t really matter if you run out of attempts and fail because the game will just scold you and then put you back into it again.
However, one irritating thing is that you can’t skip the dialogue from the debate the second time around. So I’m angrily mashing space to get through it, and then sometimes, press space one time too many. I don’t understand it because they allow you to skip repeated dialogue elsewhere, so it’s not as if they don’t know how to do it.
Anyway, this debate thing reminds me of the parts of other detective games that irritate me (and that occurs in this game to a lesser extent in other areas of the game) in that the ‘logic’ isn’t logical to me. Some of the connections the game makes, especially in this section, are a stretch–at least for my brain.
That’s a big reason I did not like the Sherlock Holmes games. The logic was not logical. In fact, that’s how I felt about point-and-clicks in general. In those games, it was more like, “Pick up a ball of yarn, some lint, a worn-out shoe, and a pair of keys, combine them, and make a transistor radio!” It never made any sense, and what was even more irritating was when I would walk by something, knowing that I would have to pick it up at some time, but I could not pick it up then.
I have quit more than one game because of this, by the way. In detective games, you have to do some of that, but it’s more like ridiculous pretzel tying while deducing what is happening in a case. Sometimes, it’s the game presuming that the player has a ridiculous amount of knowledge in esoteric subjects. Or will be able to make leaps of faith that aren’t ludicrous.
Side note: I have to say that since these games are all very popular, I will concede that it might be that my brain just isn’t built to do logic in this way. Either other people can make connections I can’t, or they are having less qualms about looking shit up. By the way, I have looked up what other people think about point-and-clicks, and those who don’t like them stated the same reasons that I don’t like it: really convoluted and bizarre logic, having to combine random items to make another random item, and the UI.
Someone pointed out that the genre hadn’t really evolved in the decades, and that’s true as well. The newer entrees are devoted to the oldies, almost slavishly so. The graphics are better, yes, but the game design is not.
When the latest Sherlock Holmes came out, my impulse was to buy it and try it. I have played several of them, the latest being Crimes and Punishment (2014). Wow. Was it really that long ago? Boy, do I feel old now. The newest one has Holmes and Watson as young hotties, looking like half of a boy band. Oh, wait. His sidekick is a guy named Jon, who is NOT Watson. Still hot, though. I was tempted to get it, but Ian rightly talked me out of it. He said, “You’re going to play it and hate it, and then you’ll regret buying it.” He’s right, but I might buy it on a steep Steam sale, anyway.
Maybe not. It has racism, transphobia, and classim in the game. Frogwares put a warning about it, saying it reflected the attitudes of the time. But, from the reviews I read, people had very mixed feelings about them being included at all. Some people in those categories felt it wasn’t well done, which would be a hard no for me.
But.
You know.
Wait a minute. I have Devil’s Daughter (the one before the last, 2016) in my Steam library. Apparently, I played it for 63 minutes. I now vaguely remember playing it and hating it, but maybe it’d go better now. Ha!
There are very few Agatha Christie games. There are two (I think) Hidden Object ones that I’ve played and enjoyed. One is poirot-based and the other is Miss Marple. And there was an actual detecting Poirot game on the 3DS, but it was…not good. Oh! Wait. There were early Poirot games on the PC that were atrocious.
Hm. It seems I’ve ranted about all the things I hate about detective games rather than what I’m looking for in one. I’ll get to that in the next post, but let’s ride this wave for a bit longer.
Here are the other things I hate about detective games: needless walking around. Pixel hunting. My god. I kinda get why they did it back in the day with shitty graphics and limited tools, but in our year, 2025, that is not necessary nor wanted. I will say that stories have gotten better in more recent years, but they’re still needlessly convoluted.
Again, I have to wonder if it’s me. There was a ‘recent’ hit point-and-click called Thimbleweed Park (Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, 2017) that I played. I wanted to like it so bad, and I gave it a very fair shot. And I did not like it. At all.
I really don’t like how stuck in the past so many of these games are. I know that many of them feel so nostalgic for the olden days, but we’re in 2025. Maybe drag the genre into at least this millennium? Maybe?
It’s frustrating because so many other genres have moved forward with the decades. This is the one of the few that feels like it’s actively fighting progression. I don’t know why, but I’m about to give up on–oh shit.
I just remembered that Kathy Rain (Clifftop Games), the sequel is out. Gahhhhhhhh. I have to play it! I’ve wanted a sequel to it for so long, and I have such high hopes. *Tries in vain to tamp down the hopes, but fails*
I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about what I actually want in a detective/mystery game.