Posted on: August 3, 2017
phodopus
Verified ownerGames: 274 Reviews: 26
Fails to live up to the promise
I'm a big fan of Agatha Christie's work - in particular, Poirot. I'm also a big fan of point-and-click adventure games. However, this one, despite plenty of ingredients that ought to make it work, fails to deliver. The 3D animation looks stylish at first glance. After a moment, though, and you'll see the wooden character animations, some really shoddy textures, and some very odd rendering glitches. It also seems highly unoptimized - on a fast PC, it's really struggling to keep up the frame-rate. The story is lifted from the novel of the same name; if you've read it, you'll know the twist already. Sadly, this twist is so obviously rammed in your face as you play this game that it loses any of the Christie 'magic'. The game itself is mostly composed of shifting from one scene to another, trying to solve puzzles that are wholly unrelated to the plot. For example, there are puzzle boxes that require a number of steps to unlock. Annoyingly, it's never really clear whether you have all the inventory items to complete a puzzle. The funniest bit, by far, is the voice acting. Those of us who grew up with David Suchet's portrayal are in for a nasty shock - the Belgian accent is lumpy, inconsistent, and almost mocking. It's the other characters, especially Hastings, who are the funniest: it's almost as if the actors were trying to impersonate a robot, but badly. Towards two-thirds through, my enjoyment dropped to about zero, and only finished it for a sense of closure. On sale, this game might give a couple of hours of entertainment.; at full price, avoid.
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