The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker
FMV games have made quite the comeback in the last few years, and The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker adds to the growing library of great titles in the genre. Of course, it’s not a perfect game (what game is?), but the quality of the writing, acting and production all place this murder mystery amid the cream of the FMV crop here on Steam.
Doctor Dekker has been violently murdered by one of his patients. As his replacement at the psychiatric clinic, you are now tasked with investigating his death while helping his patients navigate their various maladies. Toss in a little Cthulhu mythos, and you have a recipe for madness that’s altogether delightful to behold.
– Real player with 63.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Atmospheric Dark Games.
I thought you knew what you were doing, Doctor.
Once you find the genres you love, you absolutely can not get enough of them. Looking through pre existing games to see which ones you will most likely like and seeing if more are going to be released. Craving more and more as you become more aware of what makes a good game and a bad game in that specific genre. FMV games are one of those genres I adore but also look into them as it can frequently not work out.
In The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, you come in right after the events of a dramatic event. A psychiatrist by the name of Doctor Dekker was violently murdered in his office by one of his patients. But who? No one knows except the one that did the act. This is where you come in, not as some cop asking them questions but taking Dekker’s spot as a psychiatrist for the same patients he had. The same patients that hides the mysterious killer.
– Real player with 47.9 hrs in game
Murderous Muses
It’s a year to the day since controversial artist Mordechai Grey was murdered.
Now, a new exhibition has opened on the anniversary of his death, featuring six of his most famous portraits - each one a potential suspect in his murder.
You play as the night watch, exploring the gallery in the echoing hours to uncover clues about his death. Solve puzzles and use the Eyes of Mordechai to bring the portraits to life, restoring the past to find his killer…
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Solve a cold-case murder mystery that re-rolls every time you play
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Explore a procedurally-generated 3D gallery with shifting rooms and unexpected twists
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Uncover clues and use deduction to find the killer
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Solve puzzles and unlock secret locations!
From the creators of The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective and Dark Nights with Poe and Munro, Murderous Muses is an infinitely replayable supernatural whodunit where choosing how to investigate is an art form…
Read More: Best Atmospheric Puzzle Games.
Noctropolis
If I was to sum Noctropolis up in two words, I would say it’s “beautifully one-dimensional”.
Initially I planned to give somewhat of a tentative recommendation based almost entirely on the game’s gorgeous environments and striking atmosphere, but as I went on playing I found that beyond that there was nothing there for it. The writing is abysmal, and even if I tried to look at it through a more tongue-in-cheek lens so much of it is just empty. It’s not an amusing kind of bad either (like “Rise of the Dragon”, which is another point-and-click game that puts style over substance). There’s no sense of weight to this world that ironically enough fleshes itself out only visually, but has absolutely no other substance to it. It’s completely hollow of personality, of characters, of emotion or of any real world. It’s a beautiful backdrop of nothing.
– Real player with 28.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Atmospheric 1990's Games.
FMV game that has been Enhanced properly.
Whenever we tend to visit our nostalgic old adventure games to reply them , we fear going back to fmv games (full motion video) because they are a pain to get it to run properly in the modern os and you can always expect them to have bad elements of adventure games aka lack of humor, death , miss a item and you get stuck forever, horrible acting in fmv etc.
So i came across this game Noctropolis Enhanced edition and had the same fears starting to play it but then , it set itself apart.
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game
Splinter
Splinter is a first-person movie/video game hybrid where the player explores the warehouse of a transhumanist hacker collective, watching full motion video clips that answer the question: What happened to Mason?
Splinter is an experiment with a new style of storytelling. A full playthrough is approximately 2 hours long, similar to a feature film.
The 7th Guest: 25th Anniversary Edition
Take this game for what it is… a snapshot in time from the early days of CD-ROM gaming. 7th Guest came out at a time when graphic realism and full motion video were cutting edge. Go into it acknowledging its place in the annals of video game history, and there is a good time to be had, for a short while at least. There are some clever puzzles scattered about.
Does the game hold up after all these years? In short, no. It’s a relic from a long forgotten and much maligned era. The visuals were certainly impressive for their time, but we’ve been spoiled heartily since then. What’s left at its core is a series of puzzles which are tame by today’s standards. The difficulty ranges from absurdly easy to absurdly difficult. However, the difficulty is mostly caused by a lack of context, particularly with the Skyscraper puzzle. Most of the puzzles have zero replay value once you’ve figured them out. The cut-scenes are poorly acted, which is on par for the early 90s. The point and click controls are a touch wonky, and there is a severe shortage of items you can actually interact with. The “action” is continually interrupted by voice overs, for some reason you must politely wait for Stauf to mock you (or move over and click the skip button) before you can click anything. The story feels arbitrary, which used to be forgivable because “WOW FMV”, but don’t go in expecting to be entertained it.
– Real player with 16.3 hrs in game
Yet another game I wish there was a neutral recommendation for. I’m giving this a thumbs up for the sheer fact that the original game itself was clearly a quality product and for this reason I feel I cannot give it a thumbs down. I can’t help but cynically view this edition, as a cash grab on what was originally a successful game. A way to remove the original from stores and jack the price up after labelling it as “remastered” while cashing in on the loyalty of fans to the title . You know, there’s this saying about ducks…if it walks and talks like one…
– Real player with 8.4 hrs in game
Contradiction - Spot The Liar!
This is a FMV detective & mystery game developed by Baggy Cat, created thanks to a kickstarter campaign. Since I love detective games and tv-shows I decided to give this one a go. This is a lovecrafted masterpiece, great from start to finish. I’m gonna try to explain why.
You play as detective Jenks, investigating a girls suicide in an english village. Mysteries surrounding the suicide quickly leads to a murder investigation. Jenks only have a day to solve the mystery. He quickly finds out about a private school for adults called Atlas that uses some questionable methods, and you learn more and more as you go. Every chapter is an hour in the game, but every chapter took me more then an hour each. It’s a pretty tricky game, but you can use clues if you get stuck.
– Real player with 15.2 hrs in game
TL;DR: It’s a very fun and interesting game,
! with a very, very, VERY bad (and extremely) unsatisfying ending
I’m probably very late to the “reviewing contradiction” party (what a weird party), the game being almost 6 years old now and having been talked about in the ExtraCredits YouTube channel (the reason why I bought it in the first place!), but I’m gonna have a go at it anyways.
Contradiction is an FMV game where you must investigate in one night a supposed suicide in a small village. The investigation is done almost entirely by talking to people (i.e. watching small bits of questioning), though some evidence is found by walking and snooping around (in fact, I’m no lawyer or law-enforcement officer, but I feel like a quite a few of the evidence found wouldn’t be admissible in court!) But the main aspect of the game is asking people about things, which can directly lead you to new evidence, but will always lead to a set of statements from each person. This is where the main mechanic of the game comes in: you can select two statements (they must be from the same person though, hold this for later) that contradict each other and if they do, indeed, you get a new line of questioning where detective Jenks brings up the contradiction to the person in question, usually leading to new evidence. When you reach key milestones in the investigation, the time moves forward, and some new witness can become available (or unavailable), and going certain places can unlock certain events that can give you new evidence to ask around about.
– Real player with 13.7 hrs in game
Flesh Eating Geriatric Internet Predator
Neutral rating overall.
It’s different, a simple “game” but I dig it. I also like one of the songs they did.
As of now achievements are still not working and not all things can be skipped while playing it seems.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
It isn’t a masterpiece of cinema or gaming, but from the title you should already know what to expect. I don’t understand all the negative reviews that seem to have had no idea what they bought in the first place. The gameplay aspect of it is just random guessing, one right out of three choices. The movie aspect is grindhouse low budget cinema, which it captures wonderfully in my opinion. The aesthetics of some of the shots and characters is really well done for an indy team. I like it a lot.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
The Bunker
Decent story marred by ultra-linear gameplay and lack of basic features
“The Bunker” is a fairly decent post-apocalyptic thriller movie - turned into a deplorably poor game that repeats all the mistakes of the “interactive movies” of the 90s, a time when these products were expected to sell on the basis of their full-motion video alone, and gameplay was an afterthought.
The premise is fairly interesting. After a nuclear strike hit Great Britain, people try to survive in bunkers, and you are the youngest resident in one of these, having been born just when the attack happened. The game starts with all other residents already dead and you being the last survivor, clinging to your daily routine because you don’t know anything else. When a system failure requires you to break out of that routine and enter long abandoned parts of the facility, disturbing memories of your past resurface.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
TLDR
This is an introspective story on a well-explored topic: the Lone Survivor in a dystopic world. It’s done pretty well too, and has a good soundtrack for the presentation, but it’s not a game as the gamer community would define. The Bunker is an interactive story, where choices matter and actions have consequences.
DEETS
First, a few notes about the interactive aspects.
1.) Most of the choices you make will be in regards to finding cookies, as opposed to survival. It’s easy to miss the few minor collectables in the game if you’re not looking for them, and it’s not always intuitive to look where they may appear. Darkened corners, minor minutia of background details, and simple but unannounced puzzles are all a factor in various scenes.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
I have been a fan of Tex Murphy since Under a Killing Moon – nearly twenty years! That said, I will not do this game or the community a disservice by writing anything less than a fully honest review. The game succeeds far more often than it fails, but is far from perfect, so I will not score it 10 out of nostalgia, or 0 out of disappointment.
First, let me give this game a score out of ten. In my opinion, it falls somewhere around 7.5. I think this game will please Tex fans and newcomers alike, even if it isn’t perfect. If you like a good story or adventure games, then check this one out. If you like it, I highly recommend trying out Tex’s past adventures.
– Real player with 31.4 hrs in game
As a Tex Murphy fan, I was stoked after hearing about the newest installment, and boy was I eager to play! But after playing half-way through, I found myself questioning whether I should even bother finishing the game. It was only through sheer force of will and a weird, nostalgic obligation, that I managed to see it through to the end. sigh So where to begin?
Let’s first talk about the things it did well:
Revisiting Chandler Avenue and reuniting with the old cast was a treat for old Tex Murphy fans like myself. And honestly, I didn’t mind the mediocre graphics, as it felt reminiscent of the old Tex Murphy games. The FMV sequences were well-done for the most part, and I enjoyed exploring areas without running into loading screens or having to change discs. (I know I’m throwing a bone here, but it’s the little things that count, right?) Unfortunately, that’s where the good ends. Now on to my personal gripes:
– Real player with 15.8 hrs in game
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight® Mystery
A game I revisited from my childhood. A FMV classic from the 90s.
It’s an incredible piece of work. Completely engrossing and uncompromising. (It didn’t actually take 152 hours, I left it on the launch screen - but expect a good 25-30 hours if you don’t use a walkthrough)
You play just over half the game as the title character, Gabriel Knight. Knight is a reluctant shadow hunter following the events of the first game, Sins of the Fathers. Living in his ancestral town in Germany, he is asked to investigate the killings of a young girl near Munich. The town folk are convinced it was a werewolf.
– Real player with 152.5 hrs in game
GK2 is the ‘Star Wars:Empire Strikes Back’ of the series, a really strong follow up to a fantastic first game, that may actually be even better than the original.
I’m on my 4th or 5th playthrough of this game since it came out many years ago, and it has singularly spawned my interest in topics such as Bavarian/German history, Werewolves and Wagner. It’s a ‘pilgrimage’ type game, which has me coming back and that in itself tells you a lot of about the quality of this game if i’m willing to do it over and over again.
– Real player with 29.1 hrs in game