If the name seems familiar, it should. This game
is based on the famous murder mystery by Agatha Christie and follows
the storyline along that railway. You play the role in this story of
Antoinette Marceau who is not a character in the book, but one made
for the game. It works pretty well and the integration is reasonably
seamless. I think that fans of the game will forgive the addition of
the extra character in order to help the story along.
You need to work out how the all the little clues
and other bits and pieces as they are fed to you by characters or
bits of the game that you observe. Poirot is out for the count on
this one so it’s up to you oh sleuth of the computer world.
The game is fairly slow paced however and if you
are wanting something a bit faster than I think at times that you
might be frustrated. The title is heavily story driven and you will
need to wade through a lot of it in order to get the clues that you
need to progress. It is slow and cumbersome at times when you add
to that the fact you must explore everywhere almost painfully and
gather items that might lead to you working out the mystery of who
dunnit.
There are a small number of cars to comb your way
through, about 5 in all and rather than having to wade your way
through them all if you thought you forgot something up the other
end of the train you can use the menu to zap your way from one end
to the other. This is a neat feature that does speed up the whole
process.
During the game you will have to make sure that
you check in with Poirot and he’ll get you going on little tasks
that will help you get through it all. The details in the game look
quite nice although some of the characters are a little bit jerky
and movies are pixelated at times. It’s the train itself that is the
star of the show in the looks department.
This is a game that whilst well put together will
test your patience at times with how slow it is. If you are a fan
then you will be stoked as it is very faithful to the story and the
introduction of Antoinette is very well integrated. I’d say that you
might want to rent this one first.
