Agatha Christie : Murder on the Orient Express
by Dreamcatcher Interactive
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.16 You Save: $21.83 (73%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $1.17 (click here) Category: Video Games See more product details |
|---|
Video Game Reviews of Agatha Christie : Murder on the Orient Express
Customer Review: Good game but a little hard
Summary: 4 Stars
In the game I got, a book came with it, but my review is based only on the game. This game has a good plot, but some of the puzzles are REALLY hard.
Story-You are on a train making sure that a famous detective (Hercule Poirot) is comfortable on the train. Basically you're an escort. However, in the middle of the night someone is murdered, and Hercule Poirot hurts his foot. He asks you to investigate the murder and report back to him. The game is basically questioning suspects, finding clues, and solving puzzles.
Graphics-They are pretty good, but some of the people just stand somewhere not moving, and they look almost like statues. The locations are nice, though, and real looking.
Sound-The music isn't that exciting, but the voice acting is pretty good, especially the accents.
Gameplay-This game is third person and point-and-click. The two things that I don't like are 1.there is SO much questioning suspects. I mean, you ask about 5 questions to each of the 10-12 suspects. And you talk to the people multiple times. So that gets a little old. 2.The puzzles are REALLY hard! You have to find items and put them in combinations that really don't make sense. And that is really why I took off 1 star. It's so hard I was forced to use a walkthrough. That made it not fun.
Fun-Other than that, the game is great fun. The plot is good, and the some of the puzzles are fun.
Length-This is actually a long game. It takes a long time, probably about 20 hours. This, of course, is shorter when you replay it! You probably won't replay it, though, as most of the game is just questioning suspects.
Overall, this is a really good game. It is really hard sometimes, but I still recommend this game as long as you are willing to think about the puzzles that are possible to solve. I definitely recommend it!
Customer Review: Nancy Drew fans might find this a bit dark and boring
Summary: 3 Stars
Despite this game's amazing graphics and ultimately an intriguing story line, the game play was not only monotonous (looking in overly similar compartments for clues--which made it hard to tell which had been searched and not) and tedious (assembling certain articles in inventory to create odd things was required entirely too much specific guessing). Overall, it lacked the lighthearted fun that we are accustomed to with all the Nancy Drew game's we've played. I know it is unfair to compare them to others, but they could take a lesson here and learn that even a frivolous side-game, lightens the mood and overall feel of such a heavy subject as murder. There seemed to be too many names and facts to remember... I would definitely recommend taking notes. The load times increase the longer you play, and we were stuck several times for missing items we had not obtained. I liked it better as a good mystery book.Customer Review: finally an excellent adventure game
Summary: 5 Stars
I played most adventure games out there and most recently the awakened, tunguskas and orient express. and finally we have an excellent game. Minimal walkthrough need, solid graphics and an involving atmosphere make orient express a classic, maybe this was in its dna as 10 years ago broderbund published one of the best games ever with the last express (do yerself a favor and check it out). I liked and there was none but this game is even better. Now on to under the sun...Customer Review: No players tutorial and Gets Old FAST!
Summary: 1 Stars
This game was fun, but there were significant downfalls to it's layout:
PROS:
Excellent mystery soundtrack
Good acting from 14 of the 15 characters (the american woman with the accent that drifts in and out of a southern twang was the only letdown)
Good LONG gameplay
Extremely original plot
CONS:
REDUNDANT BORING SCENERY: I am the sort that doesn't typically LIKE to play games all the way through with a walkthrough. However after a short beginning, the scenery remained the same through the ENTIRE length of the game. Your character is on a five-car train, (restaraunt car, baggage car, salon car, and two residing-compartment cars). Without a change of things to look at, you will find yourself endlessly searching and REsearching the same brown/gray rooms on the train, ALL of which look identical with the exception of the passengers' luggage atop the racks. Once you find your list of clues, there is a short cinematic break, and you start all over again, interviewing the same list of characters, and searching the same rooms again for the next list of clues that spawned themselves after the last round. If the same old repetitive sceneries and gameplay styles don't bother you, then this shouldn't be an issue. I myself, like variety.
NO TUTORIAL: There was no tutorial, so from the get-go, it took a while just to learn how to move the character, go in and out of the inventory, inspect things, etc., and it wasn't until about 15 minutes to the end of the game I finally discovered that if you quickly double-click a doorway or direction, it will skip past the slow "step, step, step, step, step, step, turn doorknob, swing door open, walk inside" thing, and just allow your character to appear in the next room. Information that certainly would have been handy in the BEGINNING of the game.
INVENTORY MENUS: Combining items is a pain, and without a tutorial or any leads whatsoever, you wouldn't even know HOW to combine items. There is NOTHING in the game from the very beginning to the very end that explains the use of your inventory menus. I was well into the game before I knew that combining items was even possible, and that goes for reading your documents, studying the passenger passports etc. Your character will say things like "I will save this in my scrapbook for later use", without any way of knowing what the scrapbook is, how to gain access to it, how to flip through it once you've found it, yada yada, list goes on...
GAME-MAKERS ASSUME YOUR'E A ROCKET SCIENTIST BY NATURE, (you know, as most PC gamers are...): There is an extreme lack of guidance in certain areas where the game expects you to do things that without any REAL LIFE knowledge of criminal investigations, you would never know to do... For instance, there is a part where you are supposed to make a radio work to contact the outside world. After looking it up on the internet, I discovered that you have to place the bowl on the table, fill it with orange juice, put a small statue in it, wrap the statue in some bent copper (which you yourself had to custom bend from a passenger's bracelet, which you don't know how to do, because of the lack of explanation in combining items, the inventory menu thing again), and connect that to the radio, and then custom bend a butter knife, and pound a nail into the end of it to make a makeshift SOS transmitter key, and then connect some wiring back to the radio. Ahh, remember the good old days in college under the guidance of all our criminal justice professors, when we learned how to fix a radio with a fish bowl, orange juice, statue, copper bracelet, electric wiring, butterknife, hammer and a nail? ALWAYS a useful technique in the detective business... I guess I wouldn't have been irritated with the unlikely radio-fixing peice of this story, if there had even been ONE HINT ANYWHERE IN THE GAME that this was the solution to fixing the radio, ex., A "When Technology Fails" book on the shelf with hints for fixing broken electronic appliances out of household items, or, a letter found from someone, to someone, about items that are useful in fixing things... Just assuming that the gamer knows enough about electronics to put THAT ridiculous combination together was only one of several crazy assumptions the game-makers made.
Overall, this game would be best played from the beginning with a printed-out walkthrough at the ready. Still worth playing I suppose, but only for the amount I paid for it, which was a little over a dollar. Even if the lack of guidance weren't an issue, the dialogue and SAME scenery throughout would not be enough to capture most people's interest long enough to figure out the mystery, which is sad, because the first fiteen minutes are a real hoot.
Customer Review: A fun-filled Afternoon!
Summary: 5 Stars
Actually, it was many fun-filled afternoons. This was my first exposure to Agatha Christie on PC and I enjoyed it tremendously. The graphics on the Orient Express are great! I love the interaction. The changing scenes were good. It's important to have a strategy guide or walkthrough to assist you over the "rough spots." If you get stuck ... a good walkthrough can save you hours of grief. I can't wait to try her next installment!!!