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Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases

Zombra

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https://af.gog.com/game/agatha_christie_hercule_poirot_the_first_cases?as=1649904300

Not to be confused with Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, about a different famous detective's first case.

Discover the early cases of the legendary detective Hercule Poirot.

HP1C_GIF01_Case_EN.gif


In his early years as a detective, Hercule Poirot is invited to a reception by the influential Van den Bosch family, for the announcement of their daughter’s engagement. But tensions amongst the guests run high as a snowstorm descends on the town, trapping everyone inside the manor. The happy event is soon marred by the murder of one of the guests…

In the right place at the right time, Poirot immediately begins to investigate. What buried secrets and deadly rivalries will he uncover?
Features:

HP1C_GIF02_Poirot_EN.gif


- Rediscover the legendary detective in an all-new crime story.

- Play as Hercule Poirot in his early years as a detective, when he still had everything to prove.

- Solve a complex murder case where everyone has something to hide.

- Unveil what hides behind the deceiving appearances of the Van den Bosch family.

HP1C_GIF03_Mindmap_EN.gif


- Question all the suspects and glean crucial information from them without their knowing.

- Notice all suspicious behavior as you uncover the dark secrets and rivalries of the upper class.

- Explore a luxurious house full of buried mysteries. There is more to discover than just the murderer…

- Use your talents of deduction to link clues in your mindmap.
--------------

Looks interesting. This is by the makers of The Murder Mystery Machine, which was supposed to be procedurally generated but turned out to be a normal adventure game with lots of detective mechanics (I still haven't played it).

This one appears to have some good, complex mechanics for solving the crime in the "mindmap":

ss_2666c6232dd31e1123bf0ceb066bdb0526fd380d.1920x1080.jpg


I can't find any other real hard data about how it will play. Release in September. Stay tuned.
 
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Morpheus Kitami

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Hmm, I dunno, prequels showing how famous fictional characters became the way they were always go one way, everything iconic about a character shows up for the first time in one adventure. They kill off everything cool or mysterious about a character. Outside of maybe the Metal Gear series, which is a confusing mess timeline-wise anyway, I've never seen it done well. Scratch that, a game dedicated to that, I'm sure quite a few short prequels in the middle of a sequel do it well, because they still leave mystery to things.
 

Zombra

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Grabbed it. Note it's part of a Steam bundle, just $20 if you already own The ABC Murders. Will share impressions soon. Still very intrigued by the "Mind Map"; hopes are high.
 
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Zombra

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I'm in the Prologue and already this is rather tough.

I'm not sure if I love it or not, as it has a very adventure gamey "figure out exactly what the devs wanted you to do 100 times in a row" feel. Instead of figuring out which object to use on which other object, you're figuring out which piece of information is crucial when combined with another piece of information. Thankfully the game does tell you when you have some matching pieces to connect. This isn't as hand-holdy as it sounds as you still have 30 pieces of info and have to find the two that match up. And there are plenty of red herrings. Is it important that someone in the house left an expensive bottle of wine out? Is it important that the maid brought too many donuts for breakfast?

The voice acting is very good except none of the English actors can do a French accent, not even the guy playing Poirot. They all sound like Peter Sellers as Sidney Wang in Murder By Death.
 

Zombra

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I finished the Prologue and am looking forward to the rest of the game.

The "I'm stumped" moments are still irritating. Those few missing connectors I eventually made weren't me being stupid (I felt) - sometimes they are somewhat vague, or duplicated by another pair of similar clues which don't work. I didn't quite have to resort to brute forcing all combinations, which would have taken forever anyway, but sometimes it felt like I might have to and I made a lot of wrong guesses on a "I guess this might be it?" basis.

Still, having correct intuitions pay off and making the deductions they hope you will is very satisfying, I like the storytelling a lot, gathering clues and seeing the Mind Map fill up with potential connections gives one a feeling of accomplishment, and the main story takes place trapped in a mansion during a snowstorm, which can only be great. There are 9 (!) proper chapters to play through after the Prologue which implies a ton of content to go and plenty more "Aha!" moments ahead.
 

Darth Roxor

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I demoed this, finished the prologue, and I don't think I'll be playing it any further. It's basically "clicking on hotspots - the game", then you connect the things you found in the hotspots to make Captain Obvious deductions that lead you to more dialogue or more hotspots, rinse and repeat. Connecting the dots might just about be the most annoying part of this game, because the things you investigate are patently obvious, but you can't connect them until you've mouseover'd every goddamn corner of the screen to find that one pixel you missed somewhere which will allow you to finally advance the plot. It's all pretty mindless actually, and the game feels like a worse Sherlock Holmes - Crimes and Punishments, at least that one had some decision-making to go with your deductions, as well as clues you could miss and conclusions you could get wrong.

I also find the interface cumbersome and the graphics unappealing. It looks like something from 15 years ago without making up for it with any sort of competent art direction.

Checked this out because I thought it was made by Microids, so I was left perplexed that they could release something so very blaaaaah. Now I check again and it turns out they were just the publisher, so I guess that's that.
 
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Darth Roxor

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Got sick this week and I figured I could use some mindless entertainment so I returned to this after all, and just finished it.

Everything I said above stands except perhaps for the graphics and interface, got used to them in the end. But otherwise, the game basically plays itself, you have nearly no input of your own whatsoever, and the very few times you do, it doesn't even matter what you do - those are scenes where you have to persuade a character to reveal their secrets by asking the right questions. Except there's an instant rewind the moment you pick the wrong ones. Except at the very final scene where Poirot offers the big reveal. And even there it doesn't matter if you fail or not lol.

What is particularly aggravating about this game, however, is how patently stupid Poirot is. This is just another piece of evidence that vidya gaem developers should know their damn limits and not tackle source material that they can't do justice to. The real Poirot is brilliant, insightful and perceptive. Here, he's a bumbling fool that misses all the obvious cues while focusing only on red herrings.

Mild spoilers for anyone who cares:

There's a murder at a manor. While all the guests and family members are gathered at the dining hall, a maidservant rushes in to say that she's just found another guest murdered in his room. Now...

1. Poirot doesn't even think about questioning the maid who found the body.
2. He doesn't even feel like trying to figure out when the murder took place exactly, even though nothing about its supposed time adds up according to the stories he gathers.
3. He doesn't at all feel like interrogating the staff, who are always offscreen, and who could have been the only ones involved in the murder if the guests were all at the dining hall.
4. Not for a moment does he entertain the thought that the person who has not one, but MULTIPLE, SOLID motives to kill the victim could do it. This person also being a member of the staff.
5. He also makes nothing of it that the staff in general are shady, have motives to do it and their versions of the recent events are full of holes.
6. Instead he focuses only on the guests and family members. Brilliant as he is, he figures out that they all have alibis and could cover for one another.
7. ... it's only after another character tells it to him verbatim that he realises it could have been a conspiracy including multiple perps and the alibis could be false.
8. The stories of the staff have holes? No matter lol. The stories of the guests have minuscule inconsistencies? OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE HIDING SOMETHING.
9. He only arrives at the correct conclusions very late into the game, and typically in dumb circumstances.
10. Each time #9 happens, he goes "it's so obvious, how could I have missed this?!" while I'm left shaking my head, thinking "indeed you retard, how."

Also don't even get me started about the captain obvious deductions. At times I found myself stumped and trying to connect every dot with every other one, because it wouldn't even cross my mind that the two patently obvious ones would need connecting manually for Poirot to act on them. And I'm talking about big-brain mysteries such as:

1. Dude is broke.
2. Dude took a big loan recently.

Connect 1 to 2 and Poirot goes "WOT A REVELATION! He took a loan because he's broke!"

yeah fuck this
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Got sick this week and I figured I could use some mindless entertainment so I returned to this after all, and just finished it.

Everything I said above stands except perhaps for the graphics and interface, got used to them in the end. But otherwise, the game basically plays itself, you have nearly no input of your own whatsoever, and the very few times you do, it doesn't even matter what you do - those are scenes where you have to persuade a character to reveal their secrets by asking the right questions. Except there's an instant rewind the moment you pick the wrong ones. Except at the very final scene where Poirot offers the big reveal. And even there it doesn't matter if you fail or not lol.

What is particularly aggravating about this game, however, is how patently stupid Poirot is. This is just another piece of evidence that vidya gaem developers should know their damn limits and not tackle source material that they can't do justice to. The real Poirot is brilliant, insightful and perceptive. Here, he's a bumbling fool that misses all the obvious cues while focusing only on red herrings.

Mild spoilers for anyone who cares:

There's a murder at a manor. While all the guests and family members are gathered at the dining hall, a maidservant rushes in to say that she's just found another guest murdered in his room. Now...

1. Poirot doesn't even think about questioning the maid who found the body.
2. He doesn't even feel like trying to figure out when the murder took place exactly, even though nothing about its supposed time adds up according to the stories he gathers.
3. He doesn't at all feel like interrogating the staff, who are always offscreen, and who could have been the only ones involved in the murder if the guests were all at the dining hall.
4. Not for a moment does he entertain the thought that the person who has not one, but MULTIPLE, SOLID motives to kill the victim could do it. This person also being a member of the staff.
5. He also makes nothing of it that the staff in general are shady, have motives to do it and their versions of the recent events are full of holes.
6. Instead he focuses only on the guests and family members. Brilliant as he is, he figures out that they all have alibis and could cover for one another.
7. ... it's only after another character tells it to him verbatim that he realises it could have been a conspiracy including multiple perps and the alibis could be false.
8. The stories of the staff have holes? No matter lol. The stories of the guests have minuscule inconsistencies? OBVIOUSLY THEY ARE HIDING SOMETHING.
9. He only arrives at the correct conclusions very late into the game, and typically in dumb circumstances.
10. Each time #9 happens, he goes "it's so obvious, how could I have missed this?!" while I'm left shaking my head, thinking "indeed you retard, how."

Also don't even get me started about the captain obvious deductions. At times I found myself stumped and trying to connect every dot with every other one, because it wouldn't even cross my mind that the two patently obvious ones would need connecting manually for Poirot to act on them. And I'm talking about big-brain mysteries such as:

1. Dude is broke.
2. Dude took a big loan recently.

Connect 1 to 2 and Poirot goes "WOT A REVELATION! He took a loan because he's broke!"

yeah fuck this

Thanks! If it weren't for the deluge of the new games this and last month, i would have probably pulled the trigger on this. Rathee spend my money on kathy rain DC next week
 

pickmeister

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I downloaded this for my wife the other day as she loves many Agatha Christie crime stories. She's not very demanding when it comes to games but she noped the hell out of this garbage at the end of the first case.

The GUI and its controls feel like a weird, motion sickness inducing console port. You can't just move a cursor to where you wanna click, you move the cursor and the entire screen moves against the cursor.
Poirot's backstory isn't connected in any shape or form to original stories. Originally, he's a former, impeccable chief of police without a flaw who had to leave for England when the war started and started to work as a private investigator. In the game, he fucked up a case so they reassigned him from city to countryside.
The game is completely on rails. As already said, it plays itself. It's ridiculous. You can't find all the clues right from the start, you can only find some, then you have to speak to someone, and only after that more clues appear and it goes like that several times.
Over exaggerated characters to promote class warfare and push agenda - poor proletariat exploited by bad, BAAAAAAAD aristocracy.
After finding all the clues, you have to connect them in "Mind Palace" of sorts but the connections simply don't make any sense so it feels completely random.
Characters change their behavior depending on how you approach them (i.e. which answers you choose) but, as with connecting the clues, it feels completely random.
Specific examples, including spoilers from the first case:
The first case is to solve a crime including some noblewoman. Don't remember if murder or theft or what. Poirot starts talking to her and she goes "Why did they send you? I am a noblewoman, why didn't they send a higher rank? I found the criminal, he's locked there in that room, no need to look into anything now, just lock him up!
When looking around for the clues, you hear that the noblewoman loves to read. When stumbling across a library containing unbelievable FOUR WHOLE BOOKS, which Poirot comments "Someone's an avid reader.".
At some point, you're looking for a key the noblewoman doesn't want to give you but she says something like "It's hidden somewhere close to my heart.". You might wanna check the library and check the collection of four books, right? No, first you gotta ask a maid about the woman's favorite book and then you can go look around for the key.
After gathering all the clues, you tell the noblewoman your conclusion, which she's unhappy with, complains to the chief of police, and Poirot gets reassigned. Again.
What clowns write these?

Down the trash it goes.
 

Zombra

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Finished the game. It's too bad the gameplay is mostly toothless. The story is coherent, the characters are sympathetic, the crime itself makes sense. I was very pleased to find that there are indeed no "do-overs" in the (quite difficult) final chapter - and Darth Roxor misreported that nothing matters; that's not the case. There are two endings based on how well you perform in the last scene - in one, the killer is severely punished; in the other, the killer walks. So that's kind of a big deal.

Having substantial gameplay in that last half hour doesn't make up for the linearity of the rest of the game, sadly. Shamefully, there is exactly one path to actually get to the last chapter. There is only one way to reach each revelation, and if you try the wrong things, they simply don't work and you can keep trying other things as long as you want until you get the right one. Not that brute force is a low-resistance solution either - it's extraordinarily time consuming and dull to click through combinations when you can't guess what you're supposed to do. Failing isn't interesting, and grinding to success isn't satisfying.

Astonishingly, this took me almost 18 hours to finish. It strikes me as quite an achievement to build a story that requires over 150 (!) connections of clues to make it to the end. A story that long has to be this linear, I get it. I would much rather have seen a design that allows multiple paths though, using the Three Clue Rule from the Alexandrian. Each chapter here could have easily been broken up into a few major revelations, with each major revelation having three different ways to reach it, so that the player wouldn't be forced to follow the one single path through 150 connections. A player who figured out 90% of all connections would be able to get to the end without getting stumped.

At the end of the day, I am glad I played and finished this game and will remember it for its story and characters, not for its lackluster design.
 

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