I love to play PC games where you play detective - collect and analyze evidence, question suspects, etc. I’ve played the CSI games, the Law & Order games and the Nancy Drew games (not just for kids!). I seem to have run out of this type of game. Does anyone else like these games, or can offer suggestions for something else to try?
They’re a pretty old now, but the Gabriel Knight adventure games had a lot of detective work, with a supernatural angle. The first one dealt with voodoo cults in New Orleans, the second with German werewolves who love opera. Both were excellent, the second more than the first. There was a third about vampires, but I never played it.
Another adventure game, Black Dahlia, cast you as an fledgling agent in the agency that would become, after WWII, the CIA. The game ties the Black Dahlia murder to the Cleveland torso killer, the rise of the Third Reich in Germany, and Hitlers obsession with the occult.
The Blade Runner game was pretty good. You play another detective, not Decker, but his name is mentioned and a lot of other characters from the movie make appearances. There are a number of major endings, with minor variations possible. I saw one estimate that there were at least 22 distinct endings. I played through 4 times and got 4 different ones. As an example:
One time I discovered I was a replicant and decided to run away with another replicant named Lucy. We both knew we would die soon as I was unable to figure out how to remove the time limit on a replicant’s life. Another time I think I discovered all the formulas and such needed, but somehow I didn’t discover that I was a replicant, Lucy had disappeared on her own, and I ended up killing all the other replicants.
I was going to suggest Blade Runner. It’s about ripe for a remake with the fun graphics and all.
Sitting on my To Be Played shelf;
Black Mirror
And Then There Were None
Moment of Silence
Sherlock Holmes and the Silver Earring
all with detective-like gameplay or so I believe.
I also like the Nancy Drew games but I have only gotten to three or four. They come out about twice a year so it’s hard to keep up and, you know, live life.
If you care about the supernatural you might like Barrow Hill or Scratches. I did.
Indigo Prophecy gets good reviews but the action elements turned me off. That is to say I could never get out of the opening scene without getting arrested!
Their fairly old, but the Police Quest games (especially Police Quest 4: Open Season,) were pseudo-detective games. But to get them legally you need to find someone actually selling a working copy, and then go through the hassle of getting a DOS emulator and so forth. If oyu’re not computer savy, it can be complicated.
Spycraft is fairly detective-like. You use alot of high-tech spy tools in order to unravel a terrorism plot, with lots of twists and turns.
Apart from seconding, thirding and fourthing the first two Gabriel Knight installments, what came to mind for me was Discworld Noir, which had you investigating crimes in Ankh-Morpork. It wasn’t too intricate concerning the puzzles, but actually did have a nice noir (if tongue-in-cheek) atmosphere. At one point you turned into a dog and had to investigate scents which I thought was a pretty unique idea…
The old Zork text adventures had a few mysteries. “Deadline” and “The Witness” are two that I could find on-line. You can play them here. In addition, there was *“Suspect”, * *“Ballyhoo” * and “Moonmist”.
I have both CSI and Law and Order games sitting in my ‘to be played’ pile (it was Civ 4 Warlords that caused the delay!).
Please can you review these two for me?
Thanks for all the suggestions, everybody. Did anybody manage to get through “And then there were none”? I started, but found it to be very repetitive, and sorta boring. Does it get better?
I found them both to be quite good. One of the CSI titles (Miami, I think) was quite buggy, but they may have fixed that with later copies. In the CSI games, you can ask for “hints”, but the hints are basically a detailed list of exactly what to do, so don’t ask for a “hint” unless that’s exactly what you want. The graphics were fairly good, and they were quite atmospheric - at times even creepy.
As for the Law and Order, I also enjoyed them, except I always gave up after the detective work was done. (In the second portion of the game, you play lawyer in a court case, which had zero appeal for me). I seem to remember some of the earlier title of L&O made it very difficult to know what evidence was important, and which was not, so you had to pick up absolutely everything at each crime scene, which got maddening quickly. They have fixed that in the subsequent titles, though.
Watching the new show Daybreak, it occurred to me that that would make a good video game. Are there any games with this premise? (For those not familiar with the show, this cop has been framed for murder, and he keeps reliving the same day over and over. So each day he does different things and gets different reactions from the same people, and therefore he collects information about what’s going on.)