Art of Murder: FBI Confidential

by City Interactive

Product Features

• A dark and intriguing storyline based on proven concepts and filled with unexpected twists
• Extraordinary characters with interesting dialogue and approximately 100 mind tangling riddles
• 15 main locations which take you from New York City to the distant Peruvian city of Cusco
• Incredibly detailed and varied pre-rendered sceneries, enriched with background animation
• One of the longest and most exhilarating games in recent years

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001CAYBAC
• Item Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: July 29, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,320 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Art of Murder is the new title from the creators of the bestselling Schizm: Mysterious Journey; Mysterious Journey II, Sentinel, and Reah, critically acclaimed games renowned in the gaming press and by players around the globe. This is the story of rookie FBI agent Nicole Bonnet, whose first assignment is to solve a grisly series of murders that target prominent and wealthy members of the community, with the killer's M.O. featuring a disturbing calling card: the apparently ritualistic removal of the victim's heart with an implement more suited to display in a museum than use for amateur dissection. The gruesome trail begins in New York City but the clues soon lead the intrepid rookie agent to the distant Peruvian city of Cusco, the ancient seat of the Inca Empire on the border of the forbidding Amazon Jungle. Art of Murder has an exceptional combination of classic solutions with innovative ideas, such as the possibility of the heroine's death. This game is incredibly detailed and varied pre-rendered sceneries, enriched with background animation the graphics are designed by some of the best graphic artists and art directors in Poland. You will find a gripping atmosphere, created through the combination of an extraordinary storyline, beautiful graphics, three-dimensional characters who move in a natural way and cast realistic shadows, 5000 dialogue lines, original music and realistic sound effects. Art of Murder is a point-and-click adventure, features a simple user-friendly interface coupled with a classic form of gameplay that has been optimized with the latest in cutting edge innovations, as well as allowing the possibility of the central character's death, point previously unseen in classic adventure games.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good game, not disappointed, August 19, 2008

By 

Adventurer - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Art of Murder: FBI Confidential (DVD-ROM)

This game was good and I'm not disappointed with this purchase. It had potential to be really good, but there is only one game I give credit as being excellent, which is Still Life.

This is a point & click 3rd person adventure/crime/investigate type of game. At first I thought it might not be ok because they said it has 100 puzzles/riddles and 5000 lines of dialogue. I don't care much for puzzles, I just want the story & adventure to play. The puzzles are not time consuming or illogical to the game (no arcades, mazes, sliders) just put together items to place & two somewhat challenging puzzles which you may or may not need a walkthrough for...located at GameBoomers.

The dialogue was fine, didn't seem too much or boring & it also did not have the dialogue tree of choices which I was glad of. So it turned out to be a good game to me. The story is interesting & easy to follow, no nonsense or running around for no good reason. You won't get lost or wonder where to go next. The voice acting is good especially the main character & her boss.

As the game progresses it gets better because the story is written well with several characters as suspects & a trip to Peru added a nice change to the gameplay & scenery. This is one game I can say had a good ending all though it was intentionally dark. Still, you could see well enough what was going on & it was intense! I also like how they leave you wondering about something, but if you followed the story closely, you'll figure it out. :)

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun Game!, September 9, 2008

By 

Jneen (Alabama) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Art of Murder: FBI Confidential (DVD-ROM)

I thoroughly enjoyed this game and was sad when it ended. Yes, it was linear but it helped me from getting completely confused. I'm a gamer that finds all the clues first in all areas and eventually have to find a way to use them. If you don't find all the clues than you must before you can get to the next level. There were a few spots that I had to use a walkthrough, if I didn't I would have gone bald from pulling my hair out to find the solution. Overall, it's a fun game for the novice point and click gamers and more advanced ones too. I only had one bug in the game but it seem to resolve itself.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Wasted Potential, October 6, 2008

By 

Laika (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

= Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Art of Murder: FBI Confidential (DVD-ROM)

"The Art of Murder: FBI Confidential" is a game with plenty of potential, but it never lives up to its promise. You play as Nicole Bonnet, a rookie FBI agent who is assigned to a series of grisly homicides in New York City. It seems like the point-and-click adventure format would be perfect for this kind of investigation, but the game undercuts this at every turn. There are several reports, including blood tests and dental records, but the player is never allowed to actually look at them. There are also chemical tests which involve nothing more than sticking a sample in a test tube and waiting for the answer to magically appear on-screen. Even the dialogue has been simplified; there are no dialogue trees and no choices for what to say to the other characters. This is a detective game that eliminates all the actual detection.

Puzzles range from easy to frustratingly illogical. One puzzle involves combining inventory items to fix a cell phone. Unfortunately, this task can only be performed by placing the items on a teeny-tiny hotspot which suddenly appears on your desk, and there is absolutely nothing to warn players that this is the case. There's also at least one puzzle where you can (and probably will) die, though fortunately the game autosaves before this puzzle.

By far the biggest drawback to this game is Nicole herself. It's very hard to enjoy a game when you dislike the main character, and boy, did I dislike her. To begin with, Nicole is a weakling who runs like an idiot and complains that a ream of paper is too heavy (um, don't FBI agents have to go through training?). Plus, her voice acting is awful. The actress doesn't sound like she even understands her lines half the time. The one line where she shows real feeling, though, is when you try an incorrect combination, and then she sneers, "That was stupid." She says that a lot. Her other go-to phrase is "What would Nick [her partner] do?" and since the game actually goes to elaborate lengths to keep you from meeting Nick, that's a super-annoying question. Frankly, I don't know what Nick would do unless it involves skipping work again, and that doesn't help me solve the puzzle.

As far as the plot goes, it is pretty easy to pick out the murderer, and then it's just a matter of waiting for Nicole to catch up with you. This is a short game (it took me about 8-9 hours), but it felt much longer, mostly because every plot twist is telegraphed far in advance. All in all, this is an uninspired game with a bad actress and a paint-by-numbers plot. You can do better than this game, and you probably should.