Game Review: Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express

Game Review: Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express by Microids

Score: +3/-4

"Discover a modernized and revisited version of the Agatha Christie's classic. Set in 2023, Murder on the Orient Express brings the classic tale to life in a way that will surprise even the most dedicated fans. With brand-new elements added to the original story, experience the mystery and suspense like never before and rediscover one of the most famous case of Hercule Poirot."

Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express has essentially three parts:

• The original murder mystery on the train. Depending on which version of the movie you've watched, this can adhere quite closely to it.
• The investigation of the Daisy Armstrong kidnapping. Some versions you have have seen give you just an info dump of this. The game has a investigation sequence you play through.
• A separate murder mystery after the murder on the train.

• +1 The core mystery is basically faithful to the original and preserved. With so many remakes butchering original stories, this actually is worth a point nowadays.
• +1 The integration of the Daisy Armstrong kidnapping investigation is good and quite clever. Overall it enhances the experience of the mystery, and is certainly better than just getting an info dump about it.
• +1 It is also critical for players already familiar with the story from any movie. Without something novel to do, the plot is already entirely revealed to the player.
• -1 Police procedures were not adhered to and really obviously dumb mistakes were made in order to force the plot along. For example:
• Detective Locke doesn't call for backup when a suspicious vehicle is still on site.
• She suspects an attempt to burn evidence but doesn't locate or remove the fuel and just leaves the site unguarded.
• -1 Barely acceptable but clearly outdated graphics. However, likely they were likely setting the bar low for what hardware is required.
• -1 Open world style (although with sharply limited locations) but basically on rails too tightly. For example:
• During the extra murder mystery, you are told about a box of knives that could be relevant.
• You can inspect the box and find it locked. There is a separate box that contains the key but you cannot inspect that.
• You have to wait until some interrogation steps are done before you can open the box with the key. However, no one tells you about it. That second box with the key becomes interactable.
• So you may well be running around all over the train trying to figure out who has the key because you already tried interacting with the box holding the key before, and there was no prompt at all. Why would you assume now that it's interactable or that it contains anything important?
• -1 Some puzzle controls are very irritating, especially the one for the puzzle box with the key to the knives. It's very hard to tell where you can click to turn the box and interact with other parts. Most of the time you end up just sliding the panels while trying to turn the box.
• -0 Puzzles are generally too easy until they suddenly get much harder in the final investigation (the one after the canonical murder on the train).
• -0 Could really have used fast travel to rapidly move around the train, e.g., by clicking the map at each end of the cars.