The Last Express

This is one of the games which define art in videogames. Which shows videogames are more the the sum of its multimedia parts. An interactive art, videogaming is, as well. The game plays in the legendary orient express before world war I. It trys to simulate realistically realtime and it is non-linear with many story turnes and endings depending on what you do. The Story is a murderstory. Game Chars have their own artificial intelligence. As stated in wikipedia, the game has about 30 "fatal" endings, and good ones as well, where only one is considered to be the proper ending. The graficstyle of the game is pure art - just a pleasure to look at, to get immersed, to enjoy it, to enrich ones soul! The game did not well when published, typically for games that are too good, too special, too deep, too avant garde, ... - despite it has received a lot of good reviews! It`s a great dventure game, a special one - one of the games gog stands for in big letters! This is one of the games that should be at a videogame museum! :)

I was 7 when my father brought this back from town by complete surprise one day. He was interested in adventure games like Broken Sword, Monkey Island and Zork and wanted to try something new. He actually never played the game because I took charge. I pretty much played the entire weekend and even though I couldn't fully understand all of the events transpiring in the game I was in love with it. The sheer feeling of being on a train. The people moving about on their different routines, the conductors making sure everyone was fitting in and the sounds of the steam engine chugging along. It was brilliant. As I grew older I came to appreciate it more and understood the events transpiring before World War 1 and all of the tension. In this game you encounter people from a number of different nations and hear their conversations as they bicker back and forth about "The French" or "That Russian fellow" and it's just amazing you can sit in a chair in the dining car the whole time and watch these events occur. There are hundreds of them too. Having played it almost 50 times over the years I always found some piece of dialogue I never knew existed. The story is just marvelous because of things like this. And as an American trying to evade the police on the Orient Express you have your own part to play and snoop around compartments finding clues about your enigmatic passengers. It's just so unbelievably unique and enthralling. I love it to bits. The voice acting, music, story and the very unique style of moving artwork ""art nouveau" was out of this world for 1997 and easily holds up today. Truthfully the only thing I can find wrong with this game is the small amount of puzzles. Play it. You can't possibly be disappointed.

As an Australian, it is hard to appreciate Europe as a continent, it's rich and often dark history without experience it first hand, and there is no more romantic or exciting way to do this than by train. Smoking Car productions seem to not only recognize this fact, but to accurately observe there is often more history and intrigue to witness inside the train carriages than outside. The Last Express has all the elements of a classic thriller. A faceless passenger boards a train on the eve of the Great War, immediately thrown into a murder mystery and volatile politics of Eastern Europe. Each of the richly drawn characters have a unique role in the story, and hold a piece of complex mystery. This adventure game is set apart from its contemporaries by its simulation of real-time, with each of the passengers acting on their own directives and reacting intelligently to your own actions in the game world. Above all else, this gives the sensation that this is 'your' story, you command it and influence its outcome, rather than being a scripted adventure with a few obligatory barricades in the form of puzzles. In addition to its rock-solid story and mechanics, the presentation of the game is exceptional. Although animation is sparse, the movements and expressions of the actors breathes life into story rarely even seen in modern video games. The game also includes a surprising amount of spoken dialog in various European languages- casually overhearing a grim-looking Russian discuss Marxian philosophy in one room, only to step into another and catch two young girls giggling and discussing in French the curious stranger who just walked in should give some idea just how much effort went into bringing every aspect of the Orient Express and its cast to life. I find it hard to enjoy games I didn't play in my youth from the 80's and early 90's as too often, despite rapturous reviews from nostalgic fans, they fail to be as compelling as contemporary games and are often plagued with issues long since solved. The Last Express is an exception to this rule- if you are mature enough to appreciate this game for what it is, you will be able to recognize it as an masterpiece in interactive storytelling.

I still have the box game, and I play it all again once every 3 years! The story is great and would deserve a movie adaptation! Many twists! And real time adventures are quite very rare (I'm thinking about this one and Gabriel Knight 3, but that's all). Of course, the animation is slow, but the game stays great! Definitely a game worth having ang playing! I have to check if my old version works on Windows 7. If not, I'll buy it again here! I wish games like this could be done today with today technologies (so with better animations). Too bad Gog couldn't get the soundtrack, though, cause some musics were quite good!