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The story is enjoyable to play through, but you never get the sense you’re solving the case. In the end Agatha Christies: ABC Murders feels like it doesn’t know what sort of game it wants to be. Admittedly, Poirot wasn’t renowned for combing crime scenes, but it’s strange as to why the first murder has an important clue to find, and yet the others are just relayed through police accounts. They’re a nice little bonus for die-hard fans, even if the facts are scattershot in quality, but they don’t really add much to the game. Instead of hunting the picture for items that stand out, ABC Murders uses these scenes as places to hide information about Christie and the world of the novels.
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Poirot investigatesĪnother missed opportunity comes from finding clues at the different crime scenes. This would have also been a good opportunity to show off the excellent stylus font the game uses, which manages to make even my illegible scribbling look classy. There are red herrings in the story as it unfolds, but by not recording enough of them it makes the final denouncement fall a little flat.Ĭonsidering the DS has such a good facility for writing things down, it’s disappointing that the game doesn’t allow the player to record the clues themselves. Having Hastings write down that a suspect likes X and have Poirot declare the murderer is the kind of person to also like X in the run up to the accusation, it’s not very hard to work out who the culprit is.Įven worse, most of the journal by the end is devoted to a single suspect - the murderer. It does, however, remove much of the enjoyment that comes from reading the novels in that it takes away almost all of the sleuthing. It’s easy to read and look through, and vitally important when it comes to the final denouncement. Dumb witnessĪs you progress through the story, and witnesses begin to contradict and lie, Hastings writes down his thoughts of the case into a journal automatically. On the whole, most of the questions can be done in your head, but there are a few notable exceptions that demand to be written down. The most frustrating element of the puzzles is that the game lacks an area to jot down ideas and calculations.
This is most apparent during the final stretch of the game, in which every single suspect won’t reveal information unless you answer yet another unrelated question about dogs or money. More often than not however the puzzles feel out of place. Sometimes these questions make sense in the context of the adventure - trying to find the fastest route to the murder scene, for instance, or solving one of Poirot’s maddening leaps of logic. The other portion of the game is spent answering maths questions and solving riddles. It’s a false impression of choice, though, as you’ll end up asking every option anyway to progress, but it’s nevertheless engaging. The main portion of the game takes place as a kind of interactive story in which you choose from a selection of questions to ask each of the witnesses and police officers. The characters occasionally say a word along the lines of ‘hello’ in an unconvincing accent, but otherwise the sound is sparse and forgettable. The graphics are simple but functional, with Poirot himself looking more like David Suchet’s portrayal than Peter Ustinov. Knowing whodunit before you started would be a little rubbish so Black Lantern has included a rather neat option to play the mystery with a different murderer, complete with altered testimonies and comments from Hastings. The good news for fans of the book is that the story is pretty much intact, if a little abridged in places. As with all Poirot stories, the plot twists and turns regularly, with fingers of accusation pointed at almost all the stories’ characters.
#Agatha christie the abc murders serial#
The plot follows the enjoyable double act of private detective Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings as they track down the psychotic serial killer known only as ABC. While the DS has proved itself time and again as arguably the best platform for adventure games, The ABC Murders is the first Agatha Christie story to get a small screen(s) makeover. With over 2 billion (yes, billion) of her books having been bought worldwide, only Shakespeare and the Bible even get close to the number of copies sold.ĭespite this potentially massive audience for her clever crime thrillers, it may come as a surprise that there are so few games devoted to her stories. Modern writers must look on in envy at the success of the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie.