Customer Reviews

Still Life

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm not one for gore or S&M, and this game contains both - and nudity. Female, of course. (I don't want to get into that argument) The story is interesting. I had a lot more fun (if that's the word) playing as Victoria's grandfather Gus in 1920's Prague. I especially enjoyed his "encounter" with the head of the Prague Police. Dirtbag. Victoria is "rich little girl, cop" in present day Chicago. Well, FBI, actually. She is less entertaining than Gus, but just as macho.

I agree that some of the characters are like cardboard cutouts with stereotypical voices. The black cop in Chicago should have the NAACP screaming from the rooftops. Some of the characters, though, are quite good. Thinking about "the coachman" still creeps me out a bit. I don't think I quite trust Victoria's boyfriend, either - but that's another story.

There are three very difficult puzzles in the game. All of these puzzles are integrated into the story very well. They all share one characteristic: It's a lot of work for nothing. The game will not proceed unless you solve them, but you get nothing for doing it. The first is picking a lock. I had no idea how difficult it could be to get through a lock made in the early part of the twentieth century - in Prague. The second is breaking into the "secret archives" at the FBI office in Chicago. Fried a lot of Replicators doing that. The most diabolical puzzle, for me anyway, is the third: making gingerbread men. I guess you had to be there.

All in all, though, I liked the game. I even pre-ordered the sequel. The game has a strange sort of flow to it, with strange details. It was different. I'm getting tired of Myst games, and this worked out OK.

I love point and click adventure games of all kinds, from the cheaply made to the high end ones with great graphics and music. I've played free games made by amateurs and expensive games made in the last few years by big studios. But Still Life is one of the best I've seen so far. With graphics and sound right up there with Paradise, Syberia, and The Longest Journey, a story that is believable and engrossing, puzzles that make sense and are not too hard, this was a great game and kept me going for a long time. The crime scenes and characters are realistic and gory or offensive at time. There is violence, bad language, sex (not seen, but alluded to). This is definitely a game for grown-ups. It's not a game for everyone, but if you're a fan of serial killer movies and forensic crime dramas you will like it.

The game was awesome! i wish they make more. This was such a fun and challenging game. I do admit i used the walkthrough at certain points but its ok! i wish they will come out with some more! right now i am playing the Art of Murder collection so i am going to see if i like it. But so far this game and the others in the series are my favorites!

This game is one of the best crime-solving games I have played. There are several things that go into the design of the game, which by itself, makes the game great. I have already played a game by Microids before - Tennis Masters Series 2003 - and I have said time and again that Microids did an awesome job with that game. No different here. Microids has done a great job. The graphics are awesome for its time and for a crime-solving game. There could be more improvements. But, it was still great. The sound effects are also awesome and perfectly fits each scene. And I must say, if you have a weak heart, this is not the game for you, because it can get scary for some people to go any further unless there are people around.

This is a game completely based on intuition. You need to use your head for this. If you are looking for an action-packed game where the player is part of some heavy duty action, this is not the game for you. AI does all that. Your job is to use your head on behalf of the characters.

My only complaint with the game is the technicality surrounding some of the puzzles in the game. I was able to solve most of the intuitive parts of the game without any problems. But, there are some issues such as sensitivity to your clicking and preciseness of clicking. If you click on a spot a few millimeters away, you probably won't be clicking in the right place and the puzzle won't get solved because of that. I don't know why they made it that way. They could have eased up on that a little bit.

Also, there were one or two puzzles that were meaningless and have no place in a crime-solving game. For instance, you are asked to bake the perfect cookies. Otherwise, you cannot go further in the game. Is there really any connection between baking cookies and the murders in the game? Hell No! So, most sensible gamers at this point will wonder what the hell the point that whole thing was. Some do complain about the fact that the game has no real ending. I disagree. I think the whole point here was to tell you there is another release in the same story coming, and they gave it a perfectly appropriate and suspenseful ending.

But, overall the game is still awesome, and it deserves all the five stars it gets. And, if I may say so, this game is severely under-priced.

excellent pc game. one of the most compelling and entertaining. will keep you addicted until the end except the ending is incomplete with a cliffhanger waiting for the sequel.

First with the good. The background art is some of the most fantastic art I've personally seen in any game. The game is set around Christmas time (In the case of Victoria, present day Christmas, in the case of her Grandfather Gus, obviously much earlier). Delicate snowflakes fall from the sky in outdoor scenes. You can see individual drops as water flows from a fountain exquisitely depreciated buildings, that themselves even have fabulous artwork hanging on the walls.

Now for the average...The voice acting was lacking. In some characters, it was downright bad. In other cases, annoying, and in other cases still puzzling. One big puzzle is why would some characters; characters that were supposed to be European; have western sounding voices? I am not saying that I disliked the voice acting. In many cases, I found the voice work as pleasant to listen to as the scenery was to look at. My issue with the dialogue is three fold. One, as I said, was with the accents, many of the characters were supposed to be European, but sounded American. Two, the dialogue in most cases was just plain bad. Honestly, in most cases it was drivel. Lastly, it seemed to me that inflection wasn't quite all there. At times it seemed as if the emotion that was trying to be conveyed was just falling flat on it's face.

Now, the ugly. The story was good. You had serial killings occuring in modern times being investigated by Detective Victoria Mcpherson, these cases are eerily similar to cases investigated by her grandfather Gustav, decades earlier, in Europe. This in and of itself was interesting. Unfortunately (Probably to make the game longer) the producers put several inane puzzles that needed to be solved to progress. Missions that did nothing to progress the game and used vague clues to solve them (See the cookie recipe in other reviews). This seriously undermined game play and reduced enjoyment significantly.

To make things worse, the controls were at times cumbersome and tedious, which became a hassle in certain circumstances in which actions must be done in a very specific manner in order to accomplish the job.

Overall I rate this game a C+

Don't think that, because this is a murder mystery game, you'll be doing any real investigating. You don't solve the crimes, the main characters do that when you get them to the right place. What you do is move them around from place to place and solve absurd puzzles, one of which is absolutely wrong in it's solution, so that the character can do the real job for you.

Oh, if the silly puzzles aren't enough, there's a spot where you change genres, and have to rely on your reflexes controlling a robot through a laser beam field, to move to the next part of the game. The walk throughs won't help you with that one, you either can do it or you can't, and if you can't you don't get to play the final part of the game. When my wife played it, I had to do this part for her because she was so frustrated she was going to give up and uninstall the game.

The graphics and voice acting were good, but they could have given some more thought to the story line, and the ending was a huge let down, leaving some major aspects of the story unresolved.

Side note: In baking, you don't "cream" with milk or any other liquid. That puzzle mistake alone is a good reason to slap the people who created this game.

I got the game in the mail..I went to install on my PC and it wouldnt install because all my antivirus software said this game had a trojan it was trying to install..I freaked out...I did a virus scan on just the game itself and long and behold it indeed had a trojan very strange.

Never played the game, but can't give it a bad review. I bought and tried installing it on my Windows Vista. I click to play and the screen goes black. Well, I might try it on my XP. Oh, well. Siberia worked on my Vista, and it was developed by the same company around the same time. Weird.