Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders

Most puzzle games make us feel like total detectives: witty and hardboiled investigators seeking the truth. Agatha Christie the ABC Murders actually puts us in the shoes of one in order to solve the title cases. This game is a rather faithful adaptation of Christie’s eponymous novel, which makes it a must play for bookworms, mystery novels fans and Christies followers alike. Thanks to its satisfactory puzzle system, the game is appealing for casual, intermediate and advanced players; these last ones will face a challenge that’s not an insult to their intelligence but neither unnecessarily hard just for the sake of being hard.

The game follows, almost in its entirety, the plot of Agatha Christie’s novel; this puts them in control of suave detective Hercule Poirot in his attempt to solve the crimes committed by the mysterious and daring ABC Murder. Both, the novel and the game, take place in 1920’s England, and the developing team really put an effort to create a credible atmosphere and surrounding ambiance which enrich the plot and gameplay alike. The character design, music and voice acting are remarkable, and really forge an interesting product overall.

The designers chose a cell-shaded animation style, à la Telltale Games, an immediate landmark for narrative-driven point-and-clickers, but, which as one would expect, is not as well-crafted. On the one hand, Telltale Games’ cell-shading actually makes the players feel as if a comic book was coming alive in front of them; in the case of Agatha Christie the ABC Murders, cell-shading feels a bit underdeveloped, mainly because of its sloppy use of shadows and sharp edges. At times, what should feel as a graphic novel feels more as something a bit awkward and primitive. Still, the character design stands out, mainly because it really captures the essence of other Agatha Christie’s adaptations as well as the time period in which the game is set.

Speaking of animation details, perhaps the most annoying flaw is the evident lack of lip-sync. While the voice acting is, to say the least, amazing, the lip-sync defeats all the purpose of having talking characters and, in a game in which characters are speaking to each other 90% of the time, it is especially noticeable and incredibly annoying. Still, if you get past that detail, both the narrative and the voice acting actually feel like they contribute to each other’s development. Just try to avoid looking directly at the characters’ mouths, which proves to be almost impossible, because you have to be looking for clues in the whole screen.

Now that we mention clues, another unfortunate element present in the game is the feature that allows the character to easily spot clues in a room. With a special blurry vision surrounding the clue area, only by pointing in that direction, players are guided directly to the clue. This feels as if the game was in some sort of cruise control, which makes it tempting to just move the pointer around the room until you get the blurry vision effect.  Perhaps this was designed to avoid players getting stuck in certain areas or for the newcomers to the genre, but advanced players will feel a bit patronized by this particular feature.

There is, however, a silver lining to all of this. The puzzles in the game are a really enjoyable experience. The craftsmanship and expertise behind them is evident, because they don’t feel obnoxious and require a whole lot of intuition and learning from past mistakes. The learning curve is far from being steep. Most puzzles have not only mechanical features based on the artefact’s construction , but also a more cerebral component, which actually makes the player feel as if he were using cunning and investigative skills to solve an actual mystery. As mentioned above, puzzles are not hard only for difficulty’s sake, but rather because they require you to actually think and use the evidences and clues gathered along the way. This becomes some sort of paradox, because gathering clues is unnecessarily easy, but solving actual puzzles is a bit challenging.

However, another problem arises. Despite the fact that the actual narrative in the game is superb, due to the fact that if follows closely the plot in the novel, that ends up detracting from the gameplay at times. We all know moot decision making is very frustrating and disappointing in any game and this is not the exception. Because the game needs to follow the same story as the novel, your decisions will have no real effect on the outcome of the story. More so, the game takes control and fixes the problem by itself in order to keep narrative coherence. This is ultimately a bad decision from the developing team, but it is understandingly inevitable. When you are adapting a well-known work, you need to sacrifice some gameplay elements in order to keep the original story.

Nevertheless, the voice acting, narrative, music and puzzle solving are enough to make Agatha Christie The ABC Murders an enjoyable experience and a decent addition to your point-and-click collection. Perhaps some other titles do better what Agatha Christie The ABC Murders does best, like Sherlock Holmes Crime & Punishment or even L.A. Noire but the game is ultimately more about the experience of playing through the pages of the renamed author’s story. Perhaps the game might feel as undeveloped at times, but once you find the right pace and, furthermore, once you get immersed within the story, you will understand why Agatha Christie is considered to be one of the masters of the mystery and detective genre.

If you want a narrative-driven experience, and you already devoured the Telltale Games catalogue, you should try this new alternative. Once you get past its obvious and annoying design flaws, you’ll find yourself facing a diamond in the rough, something truly entertaining. that just needs that extra push in order to become truly memorable. If that never happens, it doesn’t matter, Agatha Christie and her incredible character construction and immersive plot will make everything blurred around the details that deserve to be noticed. If you want a good brainteaser, then this is the game for you. It is available on PS4, but also on Xbox One and PC.

Sarwar Ron, NoobFeed
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