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Crime Stories
This game is a mystery alright
Tags: Crime Stories Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Darren on May 9th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Crime Stories (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Adventure | No | ||
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I have always been a huge fan of adventure games, so when Crime Stories was announced I was typically jubilant. There has been a certain lack in point-and-click adventure games for a while now, so I jumped at the chance to see what the Adventure Company had to offer; and I certainly hoped I wouldn’t be disappointed…shows what I know.
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In Crime Stories, you follow a distinguished detective by the name of Martin Mystere. Starting off in his lavish house, you set off on a journey to find the killer of Professor Eulemberg, a famous scientist. The game’s storyline seems a bit hit-and-miss though, because there is no evidence at all to suggest that you work for the police; yet you are allowed onto the crime scene with no confrontation at all. You are also allowed to pocket crucial evidence, which would get any policeman discharged and any civilian arrested. However, let’s suspend our disbelief for the benefit of the game and delve deeper.
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Crime Stories features a now often un-used point-and-click method of controlling your character, in the third person. This makes moving Martin around the environment very easy indeed, and the user interface is very well set-out. However, the benefit that comes with a point-and-clicker is abolished when you take into account the often terrible set design. There is usually a lot of ground to cover, and Martin hardly hurries anywhere. If you have the whole of the screen to traverse, you end up screaming in frustration as he walks everywhere…..very very slowly. Considering that games like this need constant switching of areas and locations, this can get very tiresome.
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The environments which you explore, despite their bad design, are very colourful and nice to look at, if nothing else. They are also pre-rendered, and this makes the characters stand out at times; which could be considered either a good or a bad thing. The character models are OK, but the design could have been thought about more. I know that this game is based on a comic book where anatomy is hardly the most important thing, but Martin Mystere’s chin stops him from seeing his feet, and any women in the story are likely to have absolutely huge breasts. (I hear some of you asking why I’m arguing with that.)
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All of this would be acceptable if you really wanted to play, it could be grudgingly ignored. However, the one truly annoying and perplexing element of Crime Stories is the audio. The music is boring and repetitive, and there is ever only one track for each location; with the same track looping over and over again every minute or so. Even more frustrating than this is the system used for the characters’ voices. The voice acting is decent enough, but if the dialogue spills over onto more than one line (the game uses subtitles) then an unavoidable pause in the middle of a sentence is heard. This happens so often that after a while you are either incredibly amused or annoyed that such a flaw could be let slip. So……the characters end up talking……like this which …….makes you want to tear your……hair out.
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The storyline isn’t much to write home about either, which you would think is the backbone of a good crime game. You would be right too, which is probably why Crime Stories isn’t a good crime game. The puzzles are the only thing which could be considered a saving grace for Crime Stories, which doesn’t say much. Some of the puzzles are fun enough, but conversely the others are so fiendishly difficult that you slowly go insane. The game doesn’t even feature a hint system to help you out. To make matters worse, nearly every object in the environment is interactive. This makes things so much more difficult to figure out which object you need to complete a puzzle.
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Seeing as this game has been out in Europe for over a year, it has just been translated into English….very poorly. Words are often mis-spelt and meanings are misconstrued. All of these components add up to make a poorly-made, boring and frustrating game which tries so hard to be the Broken Sword of the 21st Century. The storyline is uninteresting and the characters have absolutely no substance whatsoever. If you want a good point-and-clicker, I suggest the Broken Sword series which is just about as good as you can get. Nevertheless, steer well clear of this bad egg.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Good concept + Colourful environments |
5.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Perplexing pauses in dialogue - Puzzles can be extremely hard - Boring storyline - Poorly translated - Countless red herrings when searching for clues |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| I guess Crime Stories is good for an hour or so of play, but I guarantee if you play for much longer if the disjointed dialogue doesn’t get you, the poor translation will. | |
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Tags: Crime Stories
Posted by Darren on May 9th, 2006 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
