To continue with my game awards, today’s post is going to concentrate on detective games. I am a huge Poirot fan, and I have been hungering for a good detective game. There are a few Poirot games, but they all suck. There were two recent ones done by the same company that other people loved, but that I really could not stand. I played the demo for both.
Side note: I really wish that devs would use source material other than Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. I know that they are two of the most well-known Poirot novels and have big casts of characters, but my god, they have been done to death. Controversial opinion: they are not the best of the novels.
At any rate, the games reviewed very positively, which is unfathomable to me. Not only are they not very faithful to the source material, they aren’t good detective games. Or am I expecting too much from detective games? I don’t think I am. If you’re going to adapt the books into games, they should be recognizable as Poirot games.
In addition to those two demos, I have played several detective games this year. I gave an award to one in my last post, and I’m going to give awards to two in this post as well. I just reread what I wrote aobut them, and I stand by my assessment. Hm. What am I going to call the awards and which am I going to tackle first?
The game that taxed my brain a bit too much, but was ultimately very satisfying
The Roottrees are Dead (Evil Trout Inc.)
I did not get along with this game when I first tried it out. Basically, a candy mogul and his family died in a plane crash. A mysterious person visited me (a private investigator) and wanted me to piece together the very complicated family tree. It’s a thin premise, but there doesn’t really need to be more than that to send me off to the races.
The game is set in 1998, which means the earlier days of the internet. My tools for looking up all the Roottrees are limited. There is a Google-like search engine, yes, but I have to be very specific about what I’m looking up. It’s incredible that Evil Trout Inc. came up with their own search engine for this game.
This was one of my frustrations with the game, though (to continue my theme of frustrating flaws in games I otherwise really like)–the limitations of the search engine. One reason the game is set in 1998, I think, is specifically for the ability to limit the search engine. If it were set in the last five years, for example, they would have had to have a search engine that was nearly limitless.
In the game, you have to put in very specific phrases to get the results you want/need. One thing I appreciate is that there is a generous help system. The first hint is a very broad hint, and then each subsequent hint is more specific. I think there are three hints for each broad topic, but I could be mixing that up with another game (as to how many tips per topic).
Look. If someone wants to do it all by themself, they can do so. They don’t ever have to click on the hint button and go merrily on their way. My brain is old and tired, though. I’ll give it my best shot, but then I’ll look up the hint before I get too frustrated.
By the way, I’ve included the trailer for this game above. The remastered version, as it were. The graphics are fine, but nothing to write home about. That’s not why you would play the game, and it doesn’t really matter.
I was daunted when I first tried the game, and I put it aside. I went back to it later, and it clicked for whatever reason. Being able to deduce who was related to whom and getting storybeats as I connected the dots was immensely satisfying.
Some of the connections were slim to none, but I take that as part of the genre. Or as yet another indication that my brain does not work in the same way as normal people’s brainns work. I will also say that I got really tired of it by the time I finished. I immediately jumped into the DLC (as it were), but fell off it almost immediately. It was more of the same, and supposedly better than the base game, but I was done. I have not gone back, and I’m fine with that. I had a really good time with the base game, and I’m pleased that I figured out the tip-top secret part of the game as well.
The Chinese version of Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, in which everyone is impossibly hot
Murder on the Yangtzee (OMEGAMES STUDIO)
This was yet another game with a meaty demo. I was able to play the first two chapters, I believe. At least, it was the first two cases, which were connected to each other. It was two hours, and while I found some elements of the game frustrating, I was hooked by the time I finished the demo.
The game stars Shen Chung-ping, also known as John Shen, in the early 20th century China. The devs are an indie Chinese developer, and they are huge fans of the Ace Attorney series. You can tell because the gameplay in this game is very similar (from the little I’ve played of the Ace Attorney series), for better and worse.
He is known as China’s Sherlock Holmes, and the firrst case revolves specifically around this conceit. The game is structured such that there is an overarching mystery that spans the whole game, and then each chapter has its own mystery to be solved by the end of said chapter.
I found the individual mysteries to be interesting on their own, though I thought the mechanics of actually solving said mysteries to be clumsy at best. In some things, they relied too heavily on esoteric knowledge, and in others, the mechanics are not explained well at all. I tried to give the game grace because the devs are Chinese and the English version was not done until later. And, it’s a very small team, so youu can only expect so much from them.
I ended up having to look things up on a regular basis, though, which was not fun. Again, I don’t know if it’s my brain, the game, or some of both, that I got frustrated when the way I thought did not align with the game.
Side note: This is something I find in detective games in general. Convoluted thinking that makes no sense to my brain. It’s one reason Ifound the Sherlock Holmes games so frustrating and I never finished any of them.
Most all of the detective/mystery games I’ve tried to play are very highly rated, so I have to conclude that it’s something wrong with my brain. Just as I know there is something wrong with my dexterity when it comes to action games.
Back to this game.
The overarching mystery wasn’t as interesting to me, but there was emotional heft to it. It showed me more about Chung-ping’s childhood and his abusive father. Some really horrible shit was alluded to, and it was very affecing (and effective). It set up the reason for why Chung-ping and his brother were so close, and why Chung-ping was so distraught about what happened in the overarching mystery.
I was frustrated with several of the mechanics of the game, but the characters, the setting, and the backstory of the main character shone through. In one of the chapters, I felt so much empathy for the perpetrator and wanted to let them off the hook. Unfortunately, I could not do it within the constraints of the game, which saddened me. It also frustrated me that the game gave me the illusion that I would be able to choose what happneed to the perpetrator, but there was really only one choice.
I have said repeatedly that I would prefer a game soar for the sun and fail then trundle along on the ground. That’s what this game did, and I am really glad I played it.