Customer Reviews

Culpa Innata

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am new to adventure gaming -just since I retired. I write fiction/poetry and will play a game to put off my own writing or to clear my mind.Culpa Innata keeps me going even when it's difficult for a relatively new gamer. I cannot use all of the technical jargon to describe my experience but I know when I am compelled tp keep on playing! Other reviewers have done a fine job of decribing the game's content. I do disagree with comments about the language. I wasn't put off by it at all and I am a fairly conservative consumer. Culpa's content is never gratuitus. The game is beautifully executed and fun to play. Culpa Innata's package should be featured in your intro- for gamers like me who enjoy challenging adult adventure games.

This is a traditional point and click adventure in the detective genre. Set in a future earth scenario, the main protagonist is a woman peace officer, Phoenix Wallis, who is trying to solve a murder mystery. You play in 3rd person with Phoenix as your avatar.

The game is installed entirely on hard disk, so no disk is required in the DVD drive after installation.

Low points
*Profane language, Mature rating. The bad language is unnecessary. The sexual
content, however, is within context.
*Main character has the responses of a 14 year old. This was a serious off-putter for
me. For instance, no professional security officer would ask for a warrant on the
grounds that they didn't like the suspect. This happened time after time within the
game, even when hard evidence was available.
*Technical problems have been reported, you are advised to download and install the
latest patch before playing.
*Technical requirements of game i.e. 512 Mb ram, 128 Mb graphics card DirectX 9c
compatible, 3.5 Gb hard disk space, 800MHz pentium III or Athlon XP1600, DVD
drive. That's a pretty high spec for a point and click title. I ran this game on an
Athlon 1.2 MHz machine. Apart from occasional pixillated graphics the game played
fine.
*Multiple endings mentioned on box boil down to succeed or fail to solve the case.
*There is a lot of conversation, which is broken up into smaller chunks by the game.
This didn't bother me, but I know some folks won't like this sort of aspect.
*Dynamic camera implementation simply means that in some scenes the camera
rotates continually round. Clever, but not very useful.
*Not all the threads within the game are fully wrapped up by the finish. This could
imply a sequel, but I suspect this aspect just got overlooked.

High points
*Facial animations are realistic and lifelike. If you read subtitles then this is not such a
great step forward.
*There are many locations (40) and a detailed environment
*There is a degree of non-linearity.
*Marks are awarded when the game is ended, thus conferring a degree of replay value.
*It's of 25+ hours duration which is reasonable value.
*Intuitive, mouse driven controls work well.
*Clothing of main character can be changed. No advantage in plot, but can be fun.
*Story keeps you involved.
*Graphics are good, but not outstanding.
*Sound imbalance between introduction sound and within game sound levels meant
sound had to be adjusted on entering and quitting the game. Otherwise sounds were
well done.
*Puzzles are a mix of inventory and manipulative. Mostly on the easy side and mostly
well clued.
*Pixel hunting has been kept to a minimum.
*Within game diary provides hints.
*Acting was reasonable.

The facial animation, for which this game acts as a showcase, is innovative. Clothing changing is also a novelty. Provided your machine meets the specs and the subject matter doesn't bother you, then this is a competent mystery worth playing. Online reviews seem to indicate this as an exceptionally ground-breaking title. I am not entirely convinced.

It's been a long time since I've played an adventure game that actually has a good story. Culpa Innata promises to be a pretty good adventure game, making up for the dull or silly adventures I've seen lately.

Culpa Innata begins in the future, a future where poverty and crime have almost been eliminated in a new world order called the World Union. This new alliance is founded on the premise that focusing on what makes a nation prosperous will also make the people happy, and therefore eliminate their need to commit crimes. The downside to this is that a consumer mentality is paramount, and everything is judged by money and financial power. People even have personal index ratings that reflect these values.

Besides well-written dialogue, the story features good voice-acting and characterization. The general atmosphere of the game is carefully crafted, with a fine attention to detail. The various localities are full of visual objects such as posters and pictures that depict the political and moral viewpoints of the current society. The comments that are voiced when objects are clicked are informative and believable.

The international team that created this game managed to provide great entertainment while stimulating thoughts beyond the story line. Nowhere is the relevance of the game to contemporary reality more obvious than toward the end, during an interaction with the Grandmaster. If you missed this, and the numerous other fine clues during the game, take your time to read the credits and the last sentence of the disclaimer once you have finished the game.

The game play was mostly interesting. It is self-propelled and the puzzles were diverse enough not to frustrate the beginners or bore the experienced players. I consider myself a somewhat experienced adveture game player and I had to use the walkthrough with 2 puzzles.

With fairly limited pixel hunting, the majority of the game is spent with interviews or informal talking to a wide range of characters. The dialogues are mostly interesting or downright witty. The voice acting is mostly clever and never disappointing. In fact I found some of the voice acting delightfully on target (e.g. Alicia Cordoba or Pierre DeVille) and the main character had solid voice acting throughout the game. Perfect close-up animation during the dialogues made this part of game very realistic, almost movie-like.

The graphics, with the exception of the outstanding close-ups, are slightly better than average. The locations are pleasing to the eyes, literally drawing you into the necessary discovery process.

The language is far from being vulgar although it may not be desirable for young teenagers. There is a single sexual situation that is depicted very modestly and in good taste. The characters refer to marriage as nuptial agreement, siblings as "biorelatives", and instead of talking about boy/girlfirend or spouse, they use the phrase "sexual partner". According to the story, by 2047 society evolved into a system that shook off a lot of today's conventions and took other conventions to their extreme. Whether it is for the better or worse is left for the player to decide but it is definitely an integral part of the storyline. In my opinion, this ambiguity about contrasting values of today and 2047 simply adds an extra layer of interest to the game.

In closing, in a different way than Syberia, The Broken Sword or the Longest Journey, I found this game intriguing, highly enjoyable and, with the ending, even fulfilling.

The most astounding aspect of Culpa Innata is not at all apparent in the gameplay until you reach the ending credits; it was entirely created in Istanbul, Turkey! Rest assured, the English in this North American edition is authentic and well-voiced, but the fact is a revelation on the international reality of contemporary video game production. Good for all of them!

Culpa Innata, in a nutshell, is a futuristic female-dominated (read: non-violent) investigative adventure drawn from a 1,000 page book, "Schrödinger's Cat", by Turkish author Alev Alatli. The origin is relevant in that the game contains a few plot elements which are not explained nor followed through, such as mysterious public sign slogans and a seemingly parallel universe of "Renovators"; I assume these are meant to be expanded in sequels. Unfortunately, the book has not been translated into English, so there is no way for me to read ahead. Culpa Innata is set in the World Union of 2047, and Peace Officer Phoenix Wallis is assigned to investigate the murder of a Union citizen which occured in the Rogue State of Russia. The story centers on interviews with associates and friends of the victim.

Now that PC video games are migrating to DVD as default, there is plenty of room for fuller animation and visual effects. Culpa Innata breaks new ground with enhanced facial animation, although other body animations are often looped. Voice characterizations are convincing. The "sexual content" rating refers to words, not graphics, and it is not offensive. I give the game four stars instead of five only because the storyline has too many sequential interviews without more non-essential diversions.

Yeah, I was a little disappointed in the way this one ended but that's only because I wanted it to go on forever. One of my favorite adventure games in recent memory.

Culpa Innata

This isn't so much a game as an interactive video novel. Most of the game is spent watching the main character, Phoenix Wallis, interview various persons of interest in a murder investigation. There are red herrings, dead ends, and a side story that has nothing to do with the main murder.

The Good

Story: I liked the way the murder investigation takes place against the backdrop of a different kind of society that is pretty well fleshed-out. I also liked the side story that was very mysterious and intriguing.

Techniques: Having a computer in-game that could be used for various types of analysis was really nice. I love doing forensic-type stuff. I wish I could have used it more often than I was allowed.

Sound and Video: The music and sound effects were good. Most of the voices were OK to very good. I liked Phoenix's voice. The 3D people models were OK, but the faces looked really nice (like photos had been mapped onto the heads).

Diary: I liked the diary that was kept automatically for Phoenix. It provided clues as well as kept track of tasks that weren't complete.

The Bad

Movement: The movement controls are awful. You have to move the cursor around the screen to find the arrows that allow you to move to another area, except for when you can just click on the ground to walk Phoenix across the room. It is not always obvious which method you need to use in a given scene. Also, when Phoenix is moving to another area, the view constantly shifts so that you can get really disoriented as to which way she's moving. (In cinema-speak, the camera crosses the line - frequently.)

Puzzles: The puzzles in the game were mostly ridiculous. Many of them did not fit the context of the story and seemed to be there only to exasperate the character (or player) for no good reason. The worst one was having to knock off a section of a wall and then glue it back together so that the bartender would then show up again. How in the world are you supposed to know you need to do that?

Voices: One of the ... characters ... talked like she was ... reading from ... cue cards.

Interviews: During each interview you are given a list of topics to talk about. It was often hard to distinguish one topic from another in that there was really no way to know how Phoenix was going to handle the topic. Sometimes she would act reasonably, rationally; other times she would act almost childish. As far as I could tell, it didn't really matter all that much which route you picked through a conversation other than maybe it would take fewer or more interviews to eventually get what you needed. I saved right before one conversation and did it twice in what I thought was two different ways, yet it ended up with the same result. It would have been nice if it had been possible to screw up a conversation, thereby irritating the interviewee to the point that they refused to talk to Phoenix any more and causing the player to have to find another route to get the needed information.

The Hilarious

* The two free "makeovers" that Phoenix can get result in pretty amusing makeup.
* When Phoenix walks/runs around the business district outdoors, she walks/runs backwards!

Summary

If you don't mind sitting through hours and hours of conversation, you will probably like this game since it has such an interesting story. Be warned that even though you can eventually solve the murder, the story of Phoenix doesn't end here.

This game is really a lot of fun. It doesn't seem to get boring as of yet. There is always so much to do, that if you are stuck you can try just doing some other stuff. (It is a murder mystery, set in a futuristic society!) In some games, if you can't solve the puzzle you are stuck with the story until you solve it, but this game is non-linear in that way. I really like the nighttime part, because you get to go hang out with your friend Sandra (if you called her earlier to set it up!) and gossip about all of the interesting characters you had to interrogate that day. You can choose what clothes you want to wear, and maybe just take a stroll in the Pyramid for fun.

The sexual content is just part of daily conversation, just that everyone has sexual partners and its a topic of interest to the people. I'd think that part would be appropriate for teenagers. There was only one part so far where this guy was quite suggestive. One time, she had sex with her boyfriend, but it was more like "let's go have fun now", at dinner, and then we see her the next morning at work, so nothing explicit. I haven't got that far in the game, so there could be a surprise or something.

I'm more for the story in an adventure game than the puzzles, and so far the puzzles haven't been "showstoppers" that bring your fun to a grinding halt. They have appropriate difficulty. The story and characters are very well written. Everyone thinks in terms of the society's values of greed and profit. I want to see Phoenix (the protagonist) as a "normal" person, but then she will say something totally in that society's mindset to prove she cares just as much about profit and being wealthy as anyone in that society.

It's the year 2047, and you play as security officer Phoenix Wallis, who is assigned to investigate the murder of Vassily Bogdanov, a World Union citizen killed during a visit to his homeland of Russia. Most of the gameplay involves interviewing Bogadanv's friends and associates for clues to the victim's character and activities. As other reviewers have noted, there is a LOT of talking in this game, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. At times it feels more like an interactive movie than a game, but to be fair, it is a good movie. Most of the voice work is pretty good, too - some of the accents are a bit off, but there are only a couple of actors who are so bad that they brought me out of the game.

Puzzles are pretty much split into investigative puzzles, for which you'll use Phoenix's PC, and more traditional adventure game fare. Most of the puzzles are easy-to-medium, although there are a few that can really hang you up. There's one puzzle that pretty much requires you to have seen the movie "WarGames" - I suppose you could eventually figure it out without the movie reference, but it would probably seem like a bizarre solution.

I should point out that the game really earns its "Mature" rating. Casual sex is normal in the World Union, and while you won't see (or really, hear) anything graphic, there is an awful lot of sex talk. There's also a bit of profanity, although it's nothing compared to some games on the market. There isn't much violence, but you do eventually see a flashback to Bogdanov's murder, and there's also a dream sequence which contains some nightmarish scenes of dead bodies.

My biggest complaint with Culpa Innata is that there are so many plot threads and hinted-at conspiracies that never actually go anywhere. The murder itself is wrapped up pretty well, but there's an optional side-story in the tunnels that has no payoff. There are also a lot of hints about the dark underbelly of the World Union, but Phoenix never had as much interest in those topics as I did. Plus, and this is a pet peeve, it's kind of irritating that she tells everyone how top-secret her investigation is, and then proceeds to blab to just about anyone who will listen. Have some discretion, Phoenix!

Bottom line: this is a really fun game, although it might not be for everyone. Yes, it is very talky, and you won't find closure for every storyline. Hopefully there will be a sequel, because this is an incredibly rich world that could use more exploration.

WOW! I didn't think they made adventure games like this one anymore. Move over Syberia ans The Longest Journey, there is a new game in town! This game is still a traditional point-and-click adventure. What makes it the best then? For one, the story is completely believable and yet still very imaginative. For me, I have not played a game this good since Dreamfall - and this one came out of the blue while Dreamfall was an anticipated continuation of the story started in "A Longest Journey". It has been a very long time since I enjoyed playing an adsventure game as much as i have enjoyed this one. The graphics are splendid with great attention to detail and animation. The game is also quite long - 20 hours of play at least. I like the fact that you can change clothes and roam around in the game too. There was a time when games like this cost $69.99 - this one is only $29.99 and comes on a DVD. I cannot recommend this game enough.