Game Review - Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders

Game Review: Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders by Microids
Score: +2/-2

The ABC Murders is an adventure and investigation game adapted from the classic Agatha Christie novel. The player embodies the famous Hercule Poirot in a 3rd person perspective adventure game packed with mysteries. Once again, the private detective will find himself up against a mysterious opponent who goes by the name of "ABC". Your intelligence will never have been so challenged!

You will have to explore many crime scenes in various cities set in beautiful surroundings across the United Kingdom. Leave no stone unturned when it comes to cross examinations and deadly puzzles!

Observe, question and explore everything possible in order to make the smartest deductions and understand the murderer’s plans!

I got Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders for free through Indiegala. If you know of Indiegala's basically weekly freebies, a lot of the items are by today's standards trashy productions and rehashed gameplay. But once in a while, they do give away, completely free, a polished game. And this is one of them.

Before I get into my review, some background is necessary. As the game title suggests, this is based on an Agatha Christie murder mystery, solved by her character of Hercule Poirot. Although there are various productions of her mysteries, this game clearly tries to emulate the David Suchet portrayal and even lets you score points for behaving like that version of Hercule Poirot.

So what we cannot rightly critique is the plot/story since that has to be based closely enough to the murder mystery to still be recognizable. The choice of the David Suchet portrayal is also quite a safe one as it was quite the popular series and no doubt there was an attempt to tap the nostalgia.

+ The telling of the story focusses on Hercule Poirot (i.e., the player) taking actions to acquire the necessary clues for deduction. In this way it plays out more like a detective / deduction game, and perhaps that is expected. There's much less talking and more action (clicking on things) to make it feel like you are the one piecing things together.

- However, since the story is already decided ahead of time, there is really no chance of being wrong or coming to the wrong conclusions. So in the end, the game plays out more like a contemporary hidden object game: Mouse over the correct areas to find the "hidden objects" (clues); solve puzzles of increasingly implausible contraptions; and when all objectives are completed, move ahead to the next scene.

Even hampered by following an established story, there are possibilities for not being railroaded quite as obtusely, as excellently taken advantage of by Frogware's Crimes and Punishments where you can in fact "fail" by concluding a case with an incorrect deduction even if the combination of clues makes it plausible to the player.

- The drawback of being railroaded into on inevitable path is highlighted by the deduction "puzzles" where you appear to deduce something, but in reality you are to choose clues that support a deduction. Instead of choosing clues that arrive at a theory based on the clues, it becomes a trial-and-error game of choosing the right clues to trigger a predetermined success outcome, even if the mix of clues don't make sense to you.

-0 The implausible contraptions that make up the puzzles also feel very much out of place (and of course non-existent in the original story and television show), but at the same time are "necessary" to make the game a game, and not a graphic novel of branching dialogues. And the existing story doesn't really have material for story branching outside toward alternate outcomes and failure. The multi-staged plot would also just end the story abruptly in failure at too-early junctures, simply forcing the player to restart. So while this was a disappointing experience, we are not entirely justified penalizing the game.

+ If you have watched the David Suchet version, you will easily recognize key conversations and phrases. So while the progress of the game isn't the same as television series, having watched it will certainly help recapture the experience and nostalgia of the show. The game is perfectly playable without having watched the show or read the book, but one can enhance the other through the differences. And if you really want to get into character and have your fantasy of "being" Hercule Poirot you can get down to nuances like checking on your appearance in the mirror.

Overall, the game has a lot in its favour -- A famous murder mystery author, a connection to a popular and recognizable portrayal. And there are enough differences in how the tale that preserves book, television show, and game that each will still be a fresh experience even though you know how the story ends.

But as satisfying murder mystery games go, Frogware's Crimes and Punishments offers a much more intriguing experience, including the possibility of alternate outcomes that are decided by the player (although some stories were based on Sherlock Holmes mysteries).