Customer Reviews

Agatha Christie : Murder on the Orient Express

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Good. Better than the first one 'And then there are none' . David Suchet narrates text for Poirot. Recommended for both Adventure gamers and Agatha Christie fans.

The riddles are generally more logic (ATTWN had some flows in game plot as well as very short acts). Well , hmpf, there is an annoying thing as I 've found: You are supposed to eavesdrop conversations with a glass , but u do that while the conductor is watching you :)

The game offers an alternative solution so players that have read the book don't expect the famous poirot solution exposed in the book to come in.

Minor flaws: The game wants the CD even after the full installation. And I don't like the way that the inventory allows you to combine items: Most games will simply permit you to grab something and to put it on something else, allowing you to combine it. In MOTOE, you need to place all items to be combined on a specific slot (which is in a different screen than the inventory) and press the 'combine' button. And, if someone needs something and you already have it in your inventory, he will get it automatically. Yes, it saves you time, but it is a bit far of reality. Also, you have to search all the shoes in order to find out a footprint match, in order to complete the "poirot advice" . Even If you find the footprint match at once, you still have to search all other shoes only to get a comment like 'this shoe is much too small for that footprint' . Oh, and I don't like the fact that many shoes are indentical ;)

And something weird: You can search other's luggage even if they are in the same room. Weird eh?

The sound? Good. Better than in ATTWN. What I don't like in the sound is that it is much in the background and doesn't scare you to make you get off your chair. Note: That doesn't mean that the sound is bad; It is just my personal opinion.

Other good things: Saves include a snapshot, game installs completely, you can configure screen effects, subtitles included. TAC keeps the good work up.

Oh and also: Remember you are not playing as Poirot. Tricky? Even off-line, David Suchet narration rocks.

Thumbs down: A bit short. I finished it within 2 days. Yeah, perhaps I 've been playing too long ;)

Thumbs up: Book is included.
Thumbs up: You can configure screen effects, VERY useful for low cpus.
Thumbs up: 3rd finale. Exciting.

For these, I give a 5/5.

Murder on the Orient Express is the second Agatha Christie novel to be made into a PC game by AWE Productions, with several notable improvements from their first AC outing And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians). The story centers on a murder aboard the famous Orient Express. Set in 1934 (when the novel was originally published), twelve passengers (including Belgian detective Hercule Poirot) are trapped in the snowbound train during a winter avalanche. When one of the passengers is murdered, all are suspect. Instead of playing as Poirot, a new character, Antoinette Marceau, was invented, combining two characters from the original novel: a French lieutenant and M. Bouc, director of the rail company. Antoinette does Poirot's sleuthing for him after he is injured, and does so with grace and wit.

The book deviates from the novel's original ending, adding a new dimension to the mix. The majority of the in-game dialogue is taken directly from the novel, and new dialogue fits in well with Dame Agatha's original spirit. Graphics are excellent: characters are appropriately dressed and styled for the mid-1930s, and the background details are exquisite. The in-game camera lends itself to very cinematic moments, including exterior shots of the train as Antoinette briefs Poirot. Although not perfect, I greatly enjoyed Murder on the Orient Expressn and am greatly impressed at how much thought and care was taken to make the game true to the book.

The good:
+ Graphics
+ Music
+ Plot (including "new" ending)
+ Inclusion of paperback copy of Murder on the Orient Express
+ Rating system (you earn more points for deducing solutions without Poirot's assistance)
+ Ability to jump between rail cars to cut down on backtracking
+ Superb voice acting, particularly from David Suchet, the original BBC Poirot

The bad:
- One or two extremely far-fetched puzzles that required a walkthrough (you'll never look at cake batter and orange juice the same way!)
- Certain features are not intuitive / user-friendly. The most serious of these are the inventory and fingerprinting functions.
- If you've already read the book / seen the movie, you know how this ends.
- If Antoinette is French (educated in England), why is her spoken French so horribly British???

Note: a patch is available that corrects several minor gameplay issues related to dialogue, inventory, and crashes.

The game held my interest all through, however, be warned, it is conversation-heavy. There are few puzzles, all of which are reasonably easy and integrated within the play. You play as a lady helper of Poirot who is confined to his compartment. His voice "advises" you throughout the game. Once the inconsistency of this is passed over, then the game works well. Overall the game lasted approximately 15 hours. This was without any help either from within (Poirot) or outside (walkthrough), so it is short but not ridiculously so. There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing which is helped by a short cut system built-in to the game. Eventually Poirot gives the denouement with you providing the evidence (you need a good memory and to pay attention to conversations throughout the game). There is no way of recording conversations within the game. Check also your documents - there are fingerprint and passport listings (I only discovered this later in the game, after it was too late to be of use!). Poirot presents all 3 solutions and the choice is made automatically.

Plus points:
Sound (David Suchet's voice makes the game), graphics (natural effects are available but can be removed for lower specification computers), storey line (I guessed solutions 1 & 2 about halfway through, but solution 3 was novel), bonus book included.


Minus points:
clumsy inventory item combination, opening the safe is tricky (even when knowing the combination), you have to check all remaining shoes even after you find a match to the footprint.

Overall:
Worth playing but nothing ground-breaking.

Loved the game, was annoyed by some of the glitches. The storyline is interesting and the puzzles were fun to solve. The software design could have better thought out as if you solved a puzzle ahead of where the game thought you should have, it seemed to get stuck. I actually had to load earlier saved games and redo a couple of sections. That sort of thing takes away from the fun.

First off, I'll say their marketing technique worked. Having never read Agatha Christie books previously, I found Murder on the Orient Express to be very cleverly written (5 stars on its own) and I am interested in reading more of Hercule Poirot in the future.

The book was written in 1934, but is still very easy to read more than 70 years later. I can see now what people used to do before the advent of video games.

Concerning the game itself I can say that I was not terribly impressed (2 stars), though it did enhance my reading of the book. While the graphics and voice acting (especially by David Suchet as Poirot) were very good, the interaction with the characters and various environments do not live up to what is advertised. Your main role in the game is uninspired: take any item that can be taken and figure out how they work together. The most challenging part of the game for me involved an hours-long search for one particular item.

However, the biggest letdown was in the mystery itself. The game is heavily scripted and offers very little opportunities for you to employ your own deductive reasoning concerning the murder. Notes are taken on your behalf when you talk to the suspects, but they often leave out details that are necessary to solving the case. Also, once you interview a suspect they do not talk again until the next act; so if you didn't pick up on something the first time, then too bad. In some instances, spoiler notes appear which reveal things before they are discovered by your character!

After a number of these spoilers, I decided to stop playing so that I could enjoy the book all the way through first. When I returned to the game it naturally progressed quickly. The "new" ending was original -- and I'll give the game makers a point there -- however the mystery pretty much solves itself.

In "Murder on the Orient Express", you play Antoinette - an office employee of the train company - who, when asked to ensure Mr. Poirot(the famous detective) receives extra-special treatment aboard the train, finds herself in the position of detective herself.

After an avalanche forces their train to stop, it's discovered that one of the passengers has been killed. Although the name given on his paperwork is Ratchett, it becomes clear that this is not his real name. Who is this murdered man & who would want to see him dead? This is what you'll have to figure out, now that Poirot's sprained ankle has stopped him from venturing out of his cabin.

Once you realize who the victim is, it's now time to find & piece the clues together that will enable you to determine who did it & why. The answer may just surprise you...

Overall, I really liked this game! However, there are a few shortcomings - which is why I gave it 4 stars. These shortcomings include: the beginning is slow, every time you move onto another scene you must wait while the picture loads, and at times there is more "movie" than game playing. Yet, even with these downfalls, I would still highly recommend "Murder on the Orient Express" for those who enjoy mystery-type games.

Ok - I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book and the British movie with Sean Connery, et al. So I think - cool - I can play a game that will have some of the same beautiful settings as the book/movie. While this is true - the graphics are good and the overall look of the game is nice - the game play is HORRIBLE. Once I figured out all the characters are exactly the same as the book and the plot is exactly the same, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach about the $30 I had just spent...

Good Things -
* There is an alternate ending that the game makers have added in to at least add a little bit of interest to the finale.
* Some of the puzzles take a little bit of thought to figure them out.
* Pretty pictures and engaging play keeps you interested.
* You tell the gathered suspects how the murder happened at the end based upon your clues. Be sure to review all your clues before Poirot is carried into the Salon Car to reveal the murderer.

Bad Things -
* Game is very linear. There is no veering from the track that is set for you. There are several places where you HAVE TO solve certain puzzles before you are allowed to go on. However it is often hard to know if you are done investigating or not.
* Some of the puzzles are infantile in simplicity and 2 of the puzzles are SO HARD that there is no way to solve w/o downloading the cheat. I'm not kidding - one of the puzzles you will never get in a 1000 years. This seriously detracts from the game play.
* You play a game with Poirot (who is bedridden with a bruised ankle during much of the game play) to see if you can figure "IT" out with little or no help from him. This should be a positive. However, in many parts of the game you don't know if you are done until you come back to talk to him and if you aren't, he docks you. Not really fair. And at the end, the game doesn't give you any kind of score or whatever to gauge how well you did.
* If you know the book, you know the plot, who did it, and how it's solved. This fact makes the game play simply a job to get to the end.

I really wanted to like this game, but it's hard. 95% of the game play is just dull plugging and chugging and searching for clues or solving easy puzzles, while the other 5% is impossible - not a great combo. I doubt I'll by "And Then There Were None" either based upon the game play of this Christie game. (Follow-up Note: Yes, I was dumb enough to buy ATTWN... At least I only spent $5 this time. Same boring gameplay though - maybe third time will be the charm?)

Unless you have NEVER, EVER read this book/seen the movie, look somewhere else.

I received this game for Christmas (at my request) as I had played the first one (And Then There Were None) which was intriguing and this one had David Suchet!!!! I'm a huge fan of Poirot and was very excited at this installment. I finally got to play it and was highly disappointed!

The graphics are very good (not outstanding) and the voices are excellent, however, the game play is slow and tedious.

The game consists mostly of interviewing everyone in the train, it is a lot of questions, questions, questions and you listen. You don't even really have a choice. You pick out of a list but eventually you have to pick them all anyway, so order doesn't even matter, although sometimes it becomes confusing when you ask them out of order.

Poirot himself does nearly nothing in the game but give you hints if you need them.

The actual use of objects to solve things is so illogical that I finally had to look up a walkthrough. I knew what needed to be done, but the "how" was so ridiculous that when I found how you had to do it I sat there scratching my head saying, that makes no sense whatsoever!

I would say there is more talking than solving puzzles in this game and since I hadn't yet read the book and its been a very long time I saw the Peter Ustinov version of it (movie) I finished it just to see how it ended (and I kept hoping it would get better).

I found the game boring and tedious and would not recommend it unless you are extremely bored and die hard fan.

The PC game Murder on the Orient Express boasts beautiful graphics, a plot line provided by one of mystery's great authors, and rich narration. Yet these cannot make up for the fact that this is an incredibly boring game. The game is full of mundane tasks (retrieving this or that for someone) that require no real thinking. As another reviewer mentioned, the sequence in the game is off. The order of items and clues is incorrect, further adding to the ease of the game. As far as difficulty, it could be much improved. Game play was only about one week, playing an hour or two a day. While the game is entertaining on some level it is just priced much too high.

Although I have given this game 4 stars, in reality I would make it 3 1/2 if that was possible.

If you are undecided about buying the game based on the reviews then hopefully I can point out the good and not so good things to help you.

I should say at this point that I played the game as Poirot's assistant, which means that he will give you cryptic hints during the game. You can also choose to play without any help at all.

The Good
1. The graphics are really good, I played this on a laptop with an ATI Radeon 9600 video card and a 1.4ghz celeron processor and I was able to use all of the highest graphic settings. However, there aren't a huge amount of locations to explore to be honest, the 30 odd compartments are all identical apart from the colour of the upholstery in the 2 passenger coaches. I agree with the comments about poor lip-synching, but thats not a big deal really.

2. The plot develops in a natural, unforced manner. I knew the original story but if you haven't read the book you will find that things start to make sense with each additional piece of information you unearth.

3. Straightforward puzzles - I don't want to have to resort to a walkthrough to fathom out each and every puzzle in a game. There's nothing worse than getting bogged down for hours on one task when you completely lose the thread of the story. Having said that, getting the Ham Radio to work is one of those 'oh come on, how can anybody work that out?' moments :)

4. Related to the above, no timed puzzles and no possibiity of dying, I want my whodunnits to be an intellectual challenge, not a sweaty race against time or constant re-loads due to making a wrong move somewhere.

5. The voice acting - considering there are something like 26 discreet characters in this game, most of whom you talk to several times at length, there is nothing cringe-worthy about any of the performances and most are very good.


The Not So Good

1. This is a matter of preference, but if you prefer to actually do something rather than chat to game characters then you could be disappointed here. The thing is that you have to get them to reveal all pertinent information so that when you go back to Poirot to review the evidence he doesn't keep telling you to talk to the passengers again. It will take you at least half an hour of game time to simply collect all the passports and fingerprints.

2. As has been noted, the tedium of checking EVERY male pair of shoes is pretty bad, even after you have discovered the correct ones very early in your search.

3. When you review evidence with Poirot the dialogue tree sometimes assumes knowledge that you didn't know you had! Statements appear that are total leaps in the dark from the evidence you have accumulated.

4. The 'surprise' ending... this is so full of holes its hard to know where to start, but just one thing will suffice. The character who turns out to be 'not who they claim to be' would have been recognised as an imposter by any of the train staff immediately and would have to have learnt at least 2 languages in an implausibly short period of time to pull off their deception.


All in all though I really enjoyed this game and I only marked it down because of the repetitive nature of some of the tasks you have to perform, the melodramatic alternative ending and the shortness of the playing time.

I wouldn't pay full price for it but I got it in a 2 for 30 bucks deal and I reckon its worth it for that kind of money.