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| | Publisher: Oberon Media  Genre: Puzzle & Trivia | | | Min OS X: 10.3.1 Hard Disk: 166 MB Graphics: 800x600 |
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The area in which the game falls down, though, is in the pretension that Poirot is really conducting an investigation in all the various rooms of the steamer, or that these rooms would really be filled with the kind of junk that can be found in them. What reason, for example would Poirot have, during his investigation, to locate three numbered ducks in the bar and arrange them in the correct order on a shelf? Why would he need to locate a billiard ball with the number 16 on it and place it in a jar? Why would the mechanic have left three items of underwear in his room, and what interest could Poirot have in collecting them? And why, precisely, is there a huge slice of watermelon stuck to the side of a chair in the Reading Room?To be fair, I was reasonably impressed by the extent to which the items within each room were appropriate to the setting and the supposed occupant, and I felt that Death on the Nile was the least implausible hidden-object game I've come across to date, quite aside from being the one with the best story. It's just a pity that clicking around a set of rooms, trying to locate a shopping-list of items of very dubious relevance, never really feels like conducting any kind of meaningful investigation. The game does try its best to involve you in the story, and deserves full marks for effort in that regard, but it's somehow too static and impersonal to be truly immersive. It is at least forgiving towards the player, though. Some hidden-object games are quite intolerant of mistakes, and will penalise false clicks in various ways. Death on the Nile does dock you half a minute of time if it feels you've begun to click randomly in the hopes of finding something by accident, but aside from that there is no penalty for clicking erroneously. Moreover, its hint system is very generous. You have up to five hints to use per investigation, and if you do choose to use one, it will show you exactly where to find an object. There's none of the vaguely suggestive 'look in this general area' or 'look in this direction' hinting of other similar games; this game just picks one of the objects that you haven't found yet and shows you exactly where it is. Some players may feel that this makes the game too easy, but it can be quite useful if you've no idea what a calabash or a caduceus looks like, for example. I also felt that the hidden-object missions themselves were on the pleasantly easy side. Some of these hidden-object titles can be almost ridiculously difficult in terms of how well they hide some of their objects, but I only found two instances of objects in Death on the Nile that I felt were unfairly obscure (the worst being a Roman Numeral disguised as a chair arm support). For the most part, finding the requested objects is not too frustrating an experience by any means. Once or twice I did find that clicking them was a bit fiddly (on a couple of occasions I got penalised for random clicking when I was merely trying to find the sensitive spot of an object that I knew was correct!), but in the vast majority of cases this wasn't a problem either. In other words, the game plays well and presents a reasonable challenge without being over-difficult or unfair. Finally, after each investigation there is a puzzle to solve based on an important clue that you've discovered. The majority of these puzzles involve reassembling a shredded document such as a torn-up letter or photograph, but other puzzles are more novel, and are based on a particular found object. With the exception of a single puzzle, which I'm embarrassed to admit that I failed to solve, these are all extremely easy. (Perhaps the one I failed to solve was easy, too, but I still didn't manage it!) Just like the story-advancing elements of the guest interviews and the clue-room, these inter-investigation puzzles are entirely optional. If you don't want to play them, or if you get stuck, you can skip them without penalty. The only parts of the game that you're obliged to play through are the dozen hidden-object investigations, and even those have five generous clues to help you. So I have to say that this is an unusually magnanimous game overall; and that's no bad thing in my book, especially if you're actually interested in the story. The only problem with the story is, of course, that it's always the same, and if you've read the book or seen one of the films then you know the outcome before you start. (And if you haven't, then frankly you might have trouble keeping track of all the characters, particularly given that the game has skipped over all the scene-setting preamble.) Nevertheless, the game does have some replay value, in that the objects you're asked to find in the various rooms will change from game to game, with the exception of the essential story-advancing clues that you will always have to find.
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