Murder Diaries 3 - Santa’s Trail of Blood
Experience the Murder Diaries
In this game you abstractly follow the narration of a young man who slowly but surely becomes insane.
This leads you straight into the middle of an exciting murder case and a murder mystery unfolds while you listen to the testimonies of witness, friends and relatives.
The whole game is somewhat Christmas flavored - however, don’t get yourself comfortable, the game not going to give you a nice and warm feeling but rather confront you with a cold and harsh reality as the thrilling storytelling of the game will leave you with a cold shiver down your spine.
The game is a must have for any true fan of thrillers and anyone how enjoys a murder mystery that goes beyond the normal story telling.
How does the gameplay work?
You will play as a free-floating ghost like creature.
Basically, as the soul of someone who is experiencing the story.
You are very small in comparison to the surroundings and can fly freely through the area.
You start by exploring the area and enjoying the feeling of flying as well as the gentle yet mysterious background music.
Soon after starting to explore, you will find the first memory piece.
You can collect the memory pieces to continue with the story and to advance with the overall narration.
The story talks about a young boy, about his live and about how everything changes. It is setup as a thrilling murder mystery and acts as a contrast to the somewhat calm and enjoyable gameplay.
The first levels are quite straight forward but the further you advance the more surreal and abstracted the levels become.
Once you have finished a chapter by collecting all memory pieces and finishing the overall story of a level you will continue into the next chapter.
Read More: Best Detective Exploration Games.
L.A. Noire
Great game with a unique premise. The facial animation is used to determine if a witness/suspect is telling the truth or lying. The voice acting is solid and the cases are based on real life cases of the era. The developers researched how police investigations were done in the 40s and it shows.
Sadly, I can’t recommend this game as you require a connection to RockStar’s Social Club. After 30+ hours of playing the game stops connecting to the SC. That means it wont' launch. I’ve reinstalled the game but still I can’t connect to the SC. Such a shame too. It was good while it lasted. I’d avoid this entirely.
– Real player with 46.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Detective Crime Games.
Buyer beware.
I have bought the Complete edition and it did indeed have all the content and DLC. However in 2019 I had to uninstall to make room for other games, and here I am in 2021 trying to reinstall it, only to find that it only gives me some of the content.
It only gives me a couple of the patrol cases and the DLC that didn’t come with the original game and I found none of the regular game levels are there at all, which is odd as I had done most of them before I had to uninstall and still have trophies for them.
– Real player with 46.1 hrs in game
Lamplight City
Steampunky Island
Systemising detective work in games is difficult to do well. That’s why my interest was naturally piqued when hearing of City’s absence of a failure state. I’ve enjoyed various other games experimenting with text entry and linking/contradicting evidence to allow the player to truly embody the role, so the ability to ‘fail’ was suggestive of a promising amount of player agency. Playing Lamplight City remains a joyous experience, but it isn’t so much in its systems that it entertains, but its presentation, stories and characters. As a modern take on the 90s point and click it truly thrives.
– Real player with 22.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Detective Alternate History Games.
sniff sniff I smell a murder.
I could always go for a great mystery story. Whether it’s the core of the story or just one part of it, like trying to find out how one guy is cheating and in turn, how the main character will try to outsmart them. Then there’s a choice between how interactive the story is with you. Other than what kind of mystery you’ll be facing, there’s also different levels of interactivity. Some aims to let the audience tag along and give you a chance to try and solve it alongside the main character; while some actually keeps their audience in the dark till the end to focus on being fun (personally, I take a liking to both). With games, you can’t exactly be kept in the dark and you get the added bonus of being in the middle of it. In Lamplight City’s case, you take the role of a detective, ready to solve the various cases that is brought to your attention.
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game
Lucifer Within Us
Normally I operate a £1/hr to determine if a game is worth playing, and I’ll admit that I was worried about “Lucifer Within Us” when many were seeing short play times in the demo. However, I had enjoyed the demo so much that I gave it a chance knowing that it was very doubtful the game would be very long.
Having completely finished the game with all achievements, I feel the game was worth it.
The story is very well written and pulls you in with the voice acting adding that touch of atmosphere to convey the character emotions perfectly, particularly during confessions. My personal favourite was the second investigation where, despite having worked out what was going on, I was still shocked by the outcome and confession. The little touches with the voice acting delivery and graphic choices were key to creating that atmosphere. Well done!
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
I’ll start with the good things. This game has an interesting style and setting. The color pallet doesn’t hurt the eye and the graphics are passable if you don’t scroll too close. A strange mix of high-tech and theology would make an interesting setting for a bigger game. The mysteries themselves are pretty good and may take some time to solve on the first playthrough.
But the problem is, you will only play it once. Now, to the bad stuff.
1. The game doesn’t allow you to lose. You can’t accuse the wrong person, you can’t frustrate the suspects to the point of angry unresponsiveness. In fact, you are encouraged to do so, based on achievements. The absence of failure allows you to just play dumb and spam every possible combination of clues and statements until it clicks, making the whole detective part meaningless. Even when performing the exorcism, you are safe. Wrong daemon name? Well, just try another one!
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Find The Murderer
stinky poopy
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Detective Bot
Sadly, it keeps crashing all the time. There’s fatal errors all over, and at one point there was a bug that wouldn’t bring up the evidence UI, and then the game autosaved, so the whole save file was useless. Fix the bugs, and then it might be a fun, quirky little puzzle game.
There’s a lot to like, but it needs to work first.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Loved it! A fun cute little puzzle game :)
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter
Two years ago I’ve played Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments the previous title in this series and i though very well of that game. In fact there were so many things right with it. For starters it was a good game, it had a good selection of 6 cases in a relatively new format (for a game), which was, many short stories instead of one long one (which in this case worked excellent) It had a real good depiction of sherlock and watson, the game focused heavily on story as much as gameplay (not ancient genre conventions) and because of that, it presented freely many kinds of gameplay styles , ranging from classic interrogation with a suspect to contextual actions. This was achieved doing different things across the game, from placing and object in a certain place, to smelling a tobacco pouch to identify its brand, to throwing an harpoon on a pig (long story) to know more about a killer. All this was just the starting point, then you had your detective sense, which enabled you to find hidden prints of missing objects, and then you had your clues screen in which you associated different facts, like it was part of your brain, and ideas about the case flowed along until you reach one of many deductions to find the resolution.
– Real player with 28.4 hrs in game
I got this as part of a Humble Monthly Bundle. I personally would not pay $50 for it.
(mostly) Praise
Graphics: Pretty stunning. I do like how when doing character analysis, things are (usually) detailed enough to notice the parts you have to click on without giving up and running your mouse over the whole character for the place it wants you to find.
Animations: Not perfect, but believable and good.
Interfaces: Usually work really well or are enjoyable to use. I love the deductions screen, filling it out it really satisfying. Working at the analysis table was also great, for the most part. You may be corrected for trying to open a bottle before using a tool with it, but it’s usually pretty intuitive.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
working the night shift at the asylum
bored af
smoke a phat joint
thugs come out of nowhere
realize I am about to die
dark shadow comes down from the sky
Batman’s here!
Beats up the thugs
I thank him
He turns around and looks at me
starts walking toward me
He’s looking at the joint in my hand
Remember weed is illegal in Gotham City
mfw
– Real player with 123.3 hrs in game
This one is a classic! Truly an amazing game with respect to the source material! 10/10.
– Real player with 24.7 hrs in game
Face Noir
Not a bad game until the ending, and the voice actor is terrible. He is not the right choice for a hardboiled Raymond Chandler type detective. His voice is effeminate to the extreme and his diction is too precise for someone just out of prison and working on their last dollar during the Depression. And that actor as an Italian? How insulting to Italians everywhere. How many times do we need to hear dannazione? It was a piss poor performance. Even the guy playing the Irishman Sean was awful. His accent degenerated as the game wore on. At first his accent was passable, but by the end he must have gotten tired because he was unable to hold it together at all. He started saying “da” instead of “the.” I think he forgot who he was supposed to be because he suddenly sounded Swedish at certain points in the game. Just total amateurs! Both lead actors almost killed it for me until I turned the voice volume way down and tried to enjoy the game without them.
– Real player with 52.8 hrs in game
I rarely leave reviews for games, but felt that with the mixed reviews, I should give my input concerning this rather unique Point-N-Click.
What makes this game unique? Having played a number of other P&C games, I liked the refreshing approach in this game to selecting/using items. Unlike most selections of this genre where items are viewed & selected from a 2 dimensional panel or menu, Face Noir allows the option to view & select items in a separate closeup 3-D view, where the main character holds each item individually, and of course provides witty banter concerning each one. Another refreshing difference in this game is the ability to use some of the items via moving the mouse in strategic directions, thereby increasing the interactivity of this piece beyond the traditional “Point & Click” mechanics. These of course are not deal makers/breakers as far as the core substance of the game, but certainly add their charm thereto.
– Real player with 15.1 hrs in game
Murdered: Soul Suspect
🚀 Overview
| 👍 Merits | 👎 Flaws |
|
✔️ Meritorious story
✔️ Soul-stirring side quests
✔️ Lots of collectables
✔️ Menacing, fetching atmosphere
|
❌ Broken concept
❌ Shoddy optimization
❌ Mundane character design
❌ Linear gameplay
|
🚪 Introduction
The way Murdered: Soul Suspect expounds the afterworld postulation is very aberrant. I don’t accept the idea of being stuck in limbo until I solve the mystery of my murder or know where my body was buried. What if I wasn’t a detective or was an innocent dumbass? Am I screwed then? Will I be forever roaming the streets as a freak? What about kids? All these unanswered questions flout the paramount aspect of the afterlife that is justice for everyone. I feel like the main concept of the game was built on the protagonist’s case, ignoring everyone around him.
– Real player with 30.7 hrs in game
They okayest okay game that ever okayed, and it took me 29 disappointing hours in two gos (played once and stopped halfway because of boredom). I’m kind of upset that they made it only okay, with the great ideas they were working with.
Jokes aside, it’s a lukewarm game made out of a great idea, but it misses the mark in basically every single aspect so much that it’s a perfect 6/10 game.
The basic issue with the game that they try to do everything with collectibles (There are 242 collectibles). To tell you creepypasta/camp fire stories, to solve investigations, to uncover ghost graffities because ghost kids gonna be ghost kids, and also to get information about your beloved past wife, the love of your life…wait what?
– Real player with 29.0 hrs in game