  A cool car for a cool guy. |
He is suave. He is debonair. He's got a caveman bodyguard. He's even got his own animated series on YTV ('Martin Mystery') that explores his younger days, although they have tinkered the original story a bit to make like 'Scooby Doo'. Eccentric detective Martin Mystere is one cool cat.
In 'Crime Stories', his first graphical adventure game developed by Artematica and published in North America by The Adventure Company, Mystere tackles another peculiar case involving elements of the supernatural. Mystere latest journey into the unknown begins when a famous scientist is found murdered in his own home.
It is readily apparent that the noted egghead was iced because someone wanted to get their hands on his most recent discovery. With the original European release entitled 'Martin Mystere: Operation Dorian Grey', horror buffs should be able deduce what the decaying professor was working on and why his findings were so important that someone was willing to kill for them.
'Crime Stories' is an exceedingly simple point and click adventure with the player traveling from one environment to the next questioning characters, interacting with objects and exploring areas for clues. Items in your inventory can be combined when need be too.
Although the format is trouble-free, the gameplay is not. There is no middle ground when it comes to the complexity. Either the environments contain way too many unnecessary items to examine or they have next to none at all. For instance, tons of time is wasted right at the start as you wander around Mystere's multi-room mansion looking for scraps of paper so that you can put together a mechanic's phone number. Meanwhile, it's a big deal when you arrive at an archaeological dig yet your visit ends literally as soon as it began simply because you have no identification to prove who you are. Nicely rendered location. It looks wonderful. Too bad there is nothing to do there.
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With such an unconventional character as Martin Mystere under your control, you'd expect to come across all sorts of bizarre brainteasers and puzzles to solve. Not in 'Crime Stories'. There are no codes to figure out and very few riddles that will stimulate your brain cells. The bulk of the tasks and mysteries have straightforward solutions to them, as the items in your inventory are the neon signs pointing directly to answers. The tasks are nothing to get excited about either. You use oven cleaner to see inside a drier. You give record albums to a villager in order to obtain a key. A typical Mystere quest full of sinister charm and intrigue this is not.
In the standard adventure game of this type, the welcomed frustration level should be derived from the puzzles themselves. People loved to be challenged. They love to play detective. In 'Crime Stories' the biggest annoyance is not in cracking the mysteries but that the quests themselves are sometimes not clear. Usually, the developers will give you some clue as to what your focus should be so that you can move on. Like having some background information and then being pointed to a library to locate a specific book containing the combination to a safe. Sometimes that is not how it works in 'Crime Stories'. Many times you know what you need to do but have no idea where to go such as when you need some ID and it is back home in a washing machine. During that circumstance, there is nothing that indicates where you need to search the basement of the house. That sure ain't fair.
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'Crime Stories' features some beautifully rendered environments. |
With all of its handholding and lack of arcane mysteries, 'Crime Stories' is not something that will present any kind of challenge to veteran adventure gamers. It is more suited as an introduction to the genre for newbies who think 'Infocom' is some sort of company that deals in statistical data. Though the release has some catchy ambient music, looks fantastic and has some droll humour, Artematica hasn't fully utilized the Martin Mystere character to his full potential except for the fact that at one point during the game, Mystere actually changes his identity in a ingenious twist.
We wanted 'The X-Files' and instead we got 'Columbo'.
WHAM! Rating: |
6 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen). |
Official Web Sites: |
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