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All that Gus MacPherson
wanted from life was to paint, hang out in the corner bistro and
enjoy his retirement years in Paris of 1930s. He left his job
prematurely after a complicated investigation back in New York
turned him from a private detective into the prime suspect. After
the case was closed, he left the town and decided never to be a part
of an investigation again. His resolve lasted only until a
mysterious woman showed up at his front door, told him the story of
a decapitated sister and brother-in-law and waved a stack of dollars
in front of his face.
This is how the highly expected mystery adventure from the creators
of Syberia begins. The Microids team has created a rich film
noir adventure, full of dark locations, the occult, magic and
alchemy. Throw in a couple of ritualistic murders and turncoat
characters to spice things up a little, and you get an engrossing
adventure with great potential. While some of its potential remains
unrealized, the game will remain in my memory as one of the most
engrossing and original titles I have played in recent years.
Game mechanics Post Mortem is a first-person
point-and-click adventure game. You will see the world through the
eyes of Gus MacPherson, an American who retired in Paris. Depending
on the shape of your cursor, you will be able to move through
locations by a simple click, pick up or manipulate items and talk to
people. During conversations, the game engine switches to a
third-person view, in order for you to see your character as well.
As you start the game, you will be able to access only a limited
number of locations on your map of Paris. During the investigation,
the number of locations will increase, and you will often need to
return to a place that you have already visited because your action
somewhere else triggered a change there. Throughout the game, you
will also collect items, some of which will be necessary to
successfully conclude your investigation.
While most adventure games are heavily dependent on puzzle solving,
this game concentrates on dialogue. According to Microids, there are
about 6000 lines of spoken word, and I am inclined to believe that.
The conversations are used to create the most unique aspect of the
game – a branching storyline.
Unlike other adventure games, Post Mortem is neither linear
nor featuring dead-ends. The developers paid a very close attention
to making it possible to finish the game, regardless what position
you are in. This allowed them to implement a dialogue system where
your responses may trigger different reactions by the people you
talk to. You may pretend to be someone else to gain a person’s
trust, or you may insult them, and they will never talk to you
again. While it may be frustrating when your key witness suddenly
starts sulking, you will be always able to proceed in your
investigation through a different route. This adds realism to the
game, as well as much of the replay value.
In my case, this approach has given me something more: the
opportunity to roleplay. In the average adventure game, I try to
figure out what the developers intended me to do. I am acutely aware
that the whole game is one big puzzle, and only by guessing what the
creators had in mind, I will be able to solve it. This is not the
case in Post Mortem. Once I got confident that there was
nothing that could stop me from solving the mystery, I was free to
become the main protagonist. Instead of leading Gus on strings, I
became him and picked my answers that were most suitable to my
personality, and not those that seemed to be the most correct. This
was a very refreshing experience, and one of the reasons why I
didn’t hesitate to play the game the second time.
Unfortunately, the game engine has its flaws. Probably the worst
problem is that the dialogue does not always follow the different
choices you made adequately. As a consequence, you will be able to
ask about things that you were not supposed to know about, and learn
about things you already knew. Considering the fact that there is no
way to skip conversations, this may get a little frustrating after a
while.
While the focus of this game lies with dialogue, Post Mortem
still offers several outstanding puzzles, the vast majority of which
is highly original, logical and very entertaining. You will not get
into a situation where you would have to combine random items to
achieve the proper effect that moves you forward in the story. Nor
will you suffer from the lack of information or hints on how to
solve the puzzle. There will be a few instances when you may work
for a long time on a problem, only to hit your head when you solve
it and yell out “of course,” but most puzzles are very well balanced
between being too easy and too frustrating.
The puzzles range from picking a lock, through using an ancient
alchemical formula, to create a certain potion, to spotting
differences on two paintings. The only frustrating puzzle comes
early in the game, when you will be forced to create a composite
sketch of a suspect, based on witness descriptions. Unfortunately,
the path I have chosen allowed only for a very basic description of
a “man with a blocky chin, thick moustache, fighter nose and scary
eyes.” Considering that I had to chose from several sets of eyes,
noses, ears, hair, chins, mouths and moustaches, I came up with
several dozens of possible combinations. Another witness, whom I was
supposed to show the sketch to, only responded in a yes-or-no
fashion. Had he guided me by telling what feature to change and how,
this puzzle would have not been as frustrating as it turned out to
be. This small annoyance is offset by the fact that the game
features no timed puzzles or action sequences, which can turn a
decent adventure title into a hybrid that nobody likes.
While great puzzles are an absolute necessity for a good adventure
game, the most important factor is the story. Post Mortem
impresses and disappoints at the same time. When I started playing
the game, two other games popped into my mind as natural
comparisons: Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars and
Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. Broken
Sword was a natural fit: it deals with a American in Paris who gets
entangled into a web of deceit, involving the Templars, just like in
Post Mortem. Gabriel Knight was another mystery game,
also involving the Templars, and using a roughly similar system of
traveling and character interaction. Both of these games had a much
richer story than Post Mortem. Broken Sword featured a
cartoonish and adventure-like story, while Gabriel Knight
offered so much factual interaction that it could have been used as
an educational tool.
The story in this game is neither too adventurous, nor well
researched. However, it still has its unique charm, which makes it
such a joy to play. Post Mortem is very down-to-earth and
simple: it revolves around the lives of a few people, and it does
not require you to save the world. This premise greatly influences
the setting where the game takes place. The Paris in this game is
full of people who go about their daily lives, and unless you drag
them into your investigation, they don’t care about what’s going on.
Even if they know more than you, there is no sense of urgency for
them to tell you. Most people in this game are not really concerned
whether you succeed or not, and this attitude of theirs adds a very
refreshing flavor to the game. Regrettably, this laid-back storyline
becomes a little too extreme when it culminates into one of the most
anti-climatic endings I have ever seen in an adventure.
Interface A good adventure game depends heavily on an
easy-to-use interface. Unfortunately, the one found here is not too
user-friendly. While the main screen in adventures has been
standardized years ago, various designers still use different
approaches to inventory management. Post Mortem has one of
the most frustrating inventory management screens ever. Because the
storyline is so branched, you will pick up many objects that will be
of no use to you. To make matters even worse, most of the objects
you need are necessary only as proof that the man you framed is
innocent. However, the game displays only five items at the same
time, and you will need to scroll to find the item you are looking
for. Towards the end of the game, this scrolling becomes very
annoying. The frustration is further aggravated by the fact that
many items are very similar, and so you will need to stop scrolling
from time to time and move the cursor over an object and wait for a
pop-up with its name. Often, I was quicker solving puzzles than
finding the item I was looking for.
In what appears to be a bug, the notes that you will be able to take
during the investigation do not display properly, either. Often, I
got the message that a subject could not be found when I was looking
through my notes, and had to resort to some more endless scrolling,
in order to find the original note in my inventory. Doing so, I
noticed that some of the original papers I picked up had the same
content, even though they had different names. While these documents
were not necessary to finish the game, they could have helped me to
understand the story quicker.
Technical considerations On some systems, the game tends to
crash or have a very annoying bug where the conversations are
overlapping. A small patch, available on the game’s Web site, solves
both problems. However, finding this patch was a puzzle on its own.
Normally, I would not praise a game for technological innovation. I
don’t care much about graphics and sound, as long as the story is
good and the game is engrossing. However, I have to point out a
simple improvement in this game, which in my opinion is more
innovative than yet another increase in polygon count or a more
optimal frame rate. Upon installation, Post Mortem creates a
saved games folder in the Documents directory, and by default stores
all saves there. Every year I am losing saved locations from dozens
of games, as I regularly back up only my Documents folder. By having
my saved games by default there, I am confident now that Post
Mortem will not be one of the victims of my computer’s next
fatal crash.
Gameplay – 8 The strength of the game lies in the very
refreshing down-to-earth story, branching storyline and very
original and entertaining puzzles. I found the gameplay more
enjoyable than that of Syberia, my top adventure pick of last
year. Unfortunately, the weak interface and the very anti-climatic
ending do not allow me to assign a perfect score to the game.
Graphics – 6 It is important to realize that while
Post Mortem has been created by the company that brought us
Syberia, the actual development team was entirely different.
This results into the much weaker graphics used in this game. While
the detailed backgrounds greatly enhance the film noir feel of the
game and the cut scenes are actually reminiscent of Syberia,
the game fails miserably during conversations. The characters are
very blocky, and the lip-synching, one of the main selling points of
the game, is almost non-existent. What you get are lifeless torsos,
hands moving in a repetitive pattern and mouths opening and closing
at random intervals.
Sound – 7 The music is superb. The ambient tunes sit
in the background, and greatly enhance the atmosphere of the game.
Unfortunately, an apparent bug makes the background music switch to
a relatively loud 1930s jazz music for a few seconds at regular
intervals, disturbing the atmospheric effect of the soundtrack.
When it comes to voiceovers, I always tend to compare adventure
games to the already mentioned Broken Sword. That game
featured very professional voices, which may have been slightly over
the top with accents, but those were done with great care in order
to enhance the cartoonish atmosphere. Sadly Post Mortem
cannot compare. While the game features some excellent voiceovers,
many of which sound very professional and authentic, the main
character sounds extremely flat. I thought that he was simply
putting the emphasis on the wrong words until I realized that he
wasn’t using emphasis at all. During longer conversations, his
monotonous voice had an almost hypnotic effect, so you may want to
get a cup of coffee before starting the game.
Replay value – 7 Among modern adventure games, few
achieve the same degree of replay value as Post Mortem. The
game features three different endings, and two main paths to get to
the end. However, two problems have hurt the replay value. The first
is the relatively short gameplay. I finished the game in ten hours
without any help, and I would expect people to spend no more than
fifteen hours on the game. This may be good for a long weekend, but
it does not justify the price of $30. The second problem is the
inability to skip conversations. This is a major deterrent for
trying to replay the game again in order to try a different approach
in your investigation, as you already know the story and aren’t
interested in hearing roughly the same dialogue again.
Overall – 7.0 Post Mortem is an excellent
adventure game. While I would not recommend it to children, due to a
very graphic display of the murder, everybody else should consider
playing this title. The learning curve is low and the atmosphere
engrossing enough for this game to be the perfect introduction to
the adventure games genre. Veteran gamers will not be disappointed,
either, as most of the puzzles have not been seen before. While I am
not all too happy about the few bugs and weak graphics and sound of
the game, this game still presents an attractive buy for everybody
starved for a high-quality adventure games or people looking for a
game-related gift.
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