Post Mortem

Most people doesn't know of Post Mortem but they have tried or know Still Life. For those of you who did try Still Life, and wanted to know how good Post Mortem is, let me sum it up as short as possible: It's much moodier than the first Still Life (if that's even possible) but not necessarily a bad thing. And it's way... way... much better than Still Life 2 (that abomination shouldn't even existed). Gameplay wise, unlike Still Life, this is a first person adventure. So that you'd only see Gus during cinematic sequence. And one last thing (mild spoiler): There's a face sketching puzzle that most likely will force you to find a walkthrough. Other than that, most of the other puzzles are quite logical. And IIRC, there are multiple ways to solve through a puzzle/entering a room, which is a good thing and rare to see in a point-and-click adventure game.

Post Mortem is the first installment in the Still Life Trilogy, a story centered around the investigations carried out by two members of the McPershon family; namely Gustav and Victoria McPershon. The second part, Still Life, is a solid adventure game experience, however, this does not hold true for the current subject, Post Mortem. I think the main problem with the game is that it is heavily flawed in areas which are supposed to be the strongest points of an adventure game. The dialogues are badly written, - and unskippable! - the plot is just simply silly and while it does start out interesting it soon loses the initial tension and also it's grip on reality, boiling down to some very lowbrow occult nonsene. The branching dialogue system, which would have been a good idea had it been executed in a better manner, does a very good job at locking the player away from gathering valuable clues and information. I have to say that the puzzles are alright for the most part - I personally enjoyed the book cipher puzzle -, but some still involve pixel hunting. Still, they are far from enough to keep up the interest of the player. The only strong point is the mysterious, dark atmosphere, achieved by the nicely detailed backgrounds and fitting music - hence the 2 star rating - but that is hardly a reason to waste money and time on this game. Whether you're a fan of the adventure game genre or not, I'd recommend Still Life, but I'd advise against playing Post Mortem.

This game present itself as an atmospheric murdermystery with old school gameplay with puzzles and gathering clues. Its exactly what it is and its actually pretty decent at its best. Flaws: The story turns from decent and interesting too stupid and annoying after midway through the game. The puzzles are way too easy and dont get any harder troughout the game (except a for a few) . Voice acting tend to vary from extremely bad to half-decent. Good: The atmosphere is pretty good, probably because of the sound design and often interesting settings. Overall: Somehow flawed game but with a beating heart.

One on side I liked this game. I played it after Still Life and it's definitely better than the crap that Still Life 2 was in some aspects. The atmosphere was nice, I liked that you could do the same thing by following different paths (also replay value), I liked the main character. Some people complained about the gameplay but I didn't think it was bad. My main issue is the plot: it starts out with a nice premise and mystery (you are hired to investigate a gruesome homicide by a mysterious woman), but little by little the plot becomes less and less believable and the ending was just... Meh. I don't mind the supernatural being involved but I felt that in this case it was just put there cos it was the only explanation possible, does it make sense? The dialogues also didn't make sense sometimes, the sequence of the conversation was all over the place and you had to repeat similar lines twice, or it wasn't clear how different lines lead to different results. The puzzles had me stuck in a few places, but I thought some of them were quite interesting. All in all I would grab it on sale and for one dollar it's definitely worth the price - you can expect less than Still Life, but better than Still Life 2!