Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express

Dame Christie is turning in her grave.

Tags: Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews

Posted by Tracy Erickson on Feb 16th, 2007

Title Players
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (title page) 1
Developer Publisher Genre Online
Adventure No


It’s taken far too long to adapt Agatha Christie’s work into interactive form. The world’s most popular mystery writer crafted a body of work perfectly suited for adventure gameplay, making it a mystery why it took so long for Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express to see the light of day. As the second Agatha Christie release from The Adventure Company, the game attempts to reinvigorate one of her most famous novels with a new character and challenging puzzles. Unfortunately, the slow pace of the book doesn’t translate well as Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express is a rather dull game that doesn’t do much in place of the novel.


Murder on the Orient Express deviates from the novel in casting you as Antoinette Marceau, a young woman surveying the Orient line on behalf of the rail company. Boarding in Istanbul, her superior directs her to keep watch over Hercule Poirot as the train makes its way to Paris. The two instantly form a friendship, taking stock of the assortment of characters traveling to Paris aboard the train. The idyllic ride is interrupted, though, as the train is forced to stop due to an avalanche blocking the rails; unfortunately, events worsen as a passenger is found dead in his cabin. Hercule Poirot, unable to investigate the death due to injury, commissions Antoinette to uncover the crime and its perpetrator. As a gumshoe detective, you’ll collect evidence and interrogate passengers in the lengthy process of deducing the murderer.


Unlike traditional adventure games that focus squarely on object interaction and puzzle solving, Murder on the Orient Express features a great deal of character interaction, with an emphasis on dialogue. Balancing your investigation with hard evidence and witness testimony is the only way to crack the crime. Often puzzles can only be solved by following clues provided in conversations had with passengers. For example, an early puzzle requires you to collect a small glass tumbler in order to eavesdrop on passengers tucked away in their rooms for the night. Not only does this serve to forward gameplay, but it provides insight into the cast of characters. In this way, the game brings the novel to life by directly tying static text to interactive puzzles. Sadly, this clever translation of the novel into interactive form isn’t very exciting. The somewhat dull gameplay doesn’t do the densely-woven mystery of Agatha Christie’s writing much justice.


Moving the mouse to the top of the screen enables you to access the quick-access taskbar, which features links to the main menu, your inventory, and shortcuts to each of the train’s five compartments. The inventory serves as storage for any collected objects, as well as a place to examine and combine items. You can examine any object by using a magnifying glass, which is often necessary to complete puzzles or find clues. Compiling objects, done through a rather clunky system of dragging and dropping items onto a different screen, is occasionally required to complete a puzzle. Rather than simply allowing objects to be combined by dropping them on top of one another, you must individually drop items into a separate interface. Discovering that the selected objects can’t be combined is somewhat frustrating since so much effort is needed to simply experiment with possible combinations.


It isn’t often that an adventure game affords the option to set advanced graphical features, but Murder on the Orient Express does. From anti-aliasing to shadows to particle effects, you can tweak the visual settings for optimal performance; however, be aware that the game exerts a heavy tax on your system resources. Don’t be deceived by the relatively low system specifications for the game—Murder on the Orient Express is a straight up resource hog. As nice as the three-dimensional character models and plastic-looking pre-rendered environments may be, they aren’t enough to suffer through random drops in the framerate and occasional graphical glitches. Fortunately, there are no technical problems with the audio; quality, however, is another issue. The voice acting, depending on the character, ranges from bad to atrocious. Cheesy European accents and melodrama make for hilarious conversations, but considering the rather serious nature of the game, the voice acting doesn’t fit. The music is decent, but nothing particularly memorable or rousing.


It is undoubtedly ironic that Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express includes a full printed version of the novel bearing the same title. Saving the cash spent on the game in lieu of picking up the six dollar novel at a bookstore would not only prevent a waste of your money, but it would be more enjoyable. Interesting characters aren’t enough to counter boring gameplay and graphical issues. The only mystery to be solved here is why anyone would play this underwhelming game.

What Works Score
+ Great characterizations
+ Good tie between dialogue and puzzle-solving 		5.0
What Doesn't
- Rather dull gameplay
- Resource hog
- Atrocious voice acting
Under the Shrink-wrap
Watch out—the only crime being committed with Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express is forcing you to sit through a game that’s packed with anything but adventure. Hardly entertaining, the game features presentation problems and boring play that isn’t worth the effort. Read the book instead.
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