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Are There Any REAL Detective Games?
l337CrappyJack
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Before it comes up, yes, I've played Hotel Dusk already. I've been interested in the idea of a game that gets in depth into the details of detective work; things like staking out, tailing suspects, honest to goodness investigation, that sort of thing. But unless there's some sort of Veronica Mars or Fletch game, I'm at a loss for ideas. Any recommendations from you fine, cultured gamers at Penny Arcade?
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I actually think Carmen Sandiago was a brilliant answer to this as that is closer than probably anything else to real detective work. Get strange bits of evidence that leads to someone who probably did it...maybe. Less railroading in those games though.
Xeno's got a point. I'm just seeing if there's much out there that breaks the usual adventure game formula of "Go to crime scene, pick up evidence" being the height of the mystery solving.
http://www.telltalegames.com/store/csi
I was going to say this too. But, now that I think about it, it's really just an adventure game in which you play as a detective. Which isn't bad at all.
Many adventure games from the early to mid 90's played the detective motif pretty well. If you can find them, I'd suggest the aforementioned Deja Vu, Snatcher [good luck finding it], Rise of the Dragon, and Blade Runner.
Obviously, those last three have the whole cyberpunk / blade runner vibe, but honestly, what is Blade Runner but a detective noir movie set in the future?
Perfect ending to the Harvey Birdman game?
How about Noir (the game) and the Tex Murphy games (Mean Streets, Martian Memorandum, Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive, Overseer (which is a remake/retelling of Mean Streets))?
Also, it is scary and wonderful.
Gameplay is pretty much a text adventure (e.g. "You are in the lounge. There is a telephone next to the couch. Looking out the window, you see it is still raining very hard." You could type "search telephone" and get "The telephone line has been cut!") However, there's a layout of the house and tiny faces representing characters and their location.
Best thing about it is that you can add in the names of the people in the house. You'll have tons of laughs as you read each person's alibi at how close or ridiculously opposite they are to their real-life counterparts.
Each game can be played in a few minutes, once you get to know how quickly you can hit the arrow keys to move in the house and know what objects are pointless to search.
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
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Why? He'd almost certainly still be alive.
It was sealed in a loose-ish bag and had writing all over it and it just looked awesome. Pretty much exactly how a bag of evidence would look. Could be decent.
Edit: For PC
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Wow. Don't be a tool dude it was a joke.
These are surprisingly high quality, which I guess shouldn't really be surprising to be since I love the new Sam and Max games. Still, they're a little more like the old PC point and click adventures than what the OP is looking for I think.
Still, worth checking them out if you're a fan of the classic adventure games. Lots of dialogue trees, hunting for items, that sort of thing. Pretty good stuff really.
EDIT: Qorzm, I believe there's a sequel to that out now as well. Those always looked really neat, but I've never checked them out.
Heck, I picked up the 360 CSI somewhat on a whim for easy points and ended up really liking it. Love finding those random cool games you never expected to be cool. I need to go back and finish it but the fall schedule overwhelmed me...
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Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is an FMV game with a lot of investigation in it: mostly interviewing people and trying to pick up clues. I won't provide a site for this one but any good sleuth should be able to find a copy.
I think his joke was that if you get the death penalty you don't get put to death until like 50 years later
Because the US has a shitty slow law system
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Yep, there's a whole line of Sherlock Holmes adventure games actually:
The Mistery of the Mummie
The Silver Earing
The Awakend
Sherlock vs Arsene Lupin
Haven't played any of those games though, but from what I heard they should be pretty close to what the OP is looking for. Click here for more detailed informations.
Also, there's a video games series of famous Agatha Christie novels for the PC, maybe they worth a look?
And Then There Were None
The Murder in the Orient Express
Evil under the Sun (in developement)
You play a private investigator, and most of the game involves talking to people, writing down the salient points, then asking other people about those points, and so on. There are some Use [item] With [thing] puzzles, but it's more Interrogate [person] about [something somebody else said].
Going waaay back, if you can find it and it works on a modern platform, what about Cruise for a Corpse?
I played it back when I was a wee nipper and got confused and stuck, which probably means that it was a decently tricky murder mystery for anybody of a more suitable age.
Mean Streets
Martian Memorandum
Under a Killing Moon
The Pandora Directive
Tex Murphy: Overseer
I only played it for a little bit. And it was super-buggy. Where would you even find this game anymore?
Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
Probably a bit too old for his tastes, though.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Amazon.co.uk has some, for Windows 95, 98 and ME, plus the Playstation version. Amazon.com has one used.
Man, I need to play that game again.
Blade Runner! What an awesome game. Back when everyone was running 3GB hard drives, it came with a massive 1.5GB install... but it was so worth it. I wish I still had my copy
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Severely underrated.
edit: Recently read about this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Express) game though, and it sounds totally awesome. Wish I could play it
Someone help me, the WITWICS post got me remembering a game.. you were an agent sent to stop this evil possessed TV from taking over the world.. everytime someone touched it, he became 'fuzzy' and infected others.. all the missions took place in train stations where you had to watch schedules and buy tickets to travel around.
You could 'heal' the infected by dropping crystals that multiplied when 2 or more were next to each other. You needed like 100 to defeat the main guy.
nyone remember this? you needed to track trains and infections back to the source stations to find this monster, and i loved it.. but i can;t remember it!
EDIT: After a long goolge search... it was my friend:
AGENT USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_USA
this game was AWESOME
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Also, two of the adventure games I purchased recently(and then promptly tossed them into the big pile of games I have to play at some point) are Still Life, and Culpa Innata. Both involve investigating murders and the like, so they also may be what the OP is looking for(I'll know more if I ever get around to actually playing them).
That is actually the sequal to "Missing" and it is called "Evidence: Missing 2".
I played a bit of the first one but couldn't really get into it due to the fact I have too many games and not enough time to play them.
The cool thing is that you register your e-mail address (or do as I did and set one up just for the game) and your team actually sends you e-mails about the case your on. You have to investigate, but I don't think you get to interview any suspects, but like I said, I didn't play much of the first one.
It might be what you are looking for, and pretty cheap too. The second one looks very good and the evidence bag adds a really nice touch.
I might have to pick it up now that I think of it.
Too darn bad, because I played the demo to that game back when it was new, loved it to death, but was too busy at the time and then never got back to picking it up.
The Sherlock Holmes: The awakened suffered from some really awkward interface issues. I found the game to be a chore many times and never bothered finishing it. I stopped when he went to new orleans. If you are willing to put up with some of the worst first person controls I have ever seen, then it might be worth your time. Visually the game was just ODD. Some parts looked really nice and other parts looked like they were textured in the 80's.
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