Amazon.com: Still Life: PC: Video Games

55 Reviews

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

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3.8 out of 5 stars (55 customer reviews)

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72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Darn Good, June 7, 2005

By	wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

Victoria MacPherson is a young FBI agent with a reputation for ignoring procedure. She's investigating a series of brutal murders in Chicago when, home for the holidays, she has a peek into her Grandfather Gus's trunk. Grandpa was a PI in the 20's and it seems that one of his last cases bears an eerie similarity to the one Victoria is investigating now. Can Gus's old case files help Vic figure out what's going on?

I really, really liked Still Life, but there are some things you should know going into it. First off, it's not really a whodunnit, solve the crime and catch the killer kind of story. It has a mystery theme, but it's more about how a series of crimes has reached through time to haunt the family MacPherson than it is about Law and Order. And that is really, really well done. The parallels between the Gus case and the Victoria case are not so obvious as to be ludicrous but still meaningful. And the story is both moving and frightening, with lots of "Oh No!" moments.

Second of all, Still Life is a little atypical in its set-up. There are certain adventure game conventions that are just ignored and whether you find this annoying or kind of a relief will depend on you. The conversation trees are a case in point. Many games go out of the way to give the impression that conversing with other characters is interactive by allowing you to choose from a long list of discussion topics, even knowing that most gamers will exhaust every single topic before exiting the conversation. In Still Life, the pretense that you have some choice in this matter is dispensed with. You just keep clicking until you're done. You're not given any choice of topic or any way of choosing what order the conversation happens in. I thought this was fine. Some people really didn't like it.

Still LIfe is fairly linear. There are aspects of it that are more like an interactive movie than a gamey-game. Many of the tasks you'll accomplish don't really have much of an affect on the outcome; they merely allow you to proceed to the next part of the story. There was only one place where I had no idea what to do next; most of the time your character stated her (or his; you play as both Gus and Victoria) intention up front. The in-game menus offers both a conversation log and character journals for more information, as well. Puzzles are inventory-based mechanical and your inventory offered a "view" option for each item, wherein you could manipulate it in 3-D to collect more clues (I like this kind of thing a lot). There were only 3 puzzles of particular frustration. One where you had to randomly guess which ingredients in a recipe were which would have been greatly improved by SOME kind of clue or identifiable system. Another involved picking a lock that didn't actually seem to function in the way it was described. The third, in which you must guide a robot through a room full of deadly lasers, actually was the easiest of the three for me in that I actually had a clue what to do and accomplished it with some practice. I mention it here because many have considered it Still Life's low point. Other than this latter (where timing is important), there are no timed puzzles and you can't die.

One frustrating thing is that you have to follow a pretty strict system for using the inventory. When you encounter a hotspot, even if you have the item you need with you you can't really use it until you have clicked on the hotspot without it. Sometimes you can't collect the item you need until you've clicked on the hotspot and been informed that you need it. However, it was quite clear where everything was and easy to locate things in advance, so when you knew you needed them you could go right there instead of searching randomly.

Still Life is gorgeous to look at--the prerendered backgrounds are some of the best I've seen. Character movement was still a little stiff and stilted, however. Many scenes are gruesome and gory; we're talking serial murders here. I thought the voice acting was pretty good. Some people have complained about ethnic stereotypes. I grew up in the inner city, so I didn't notice anything strange. There is some salty language.

The ending is a cliffhanger. Still Life was planned as the second in a trilogy of games (The first, Post Mortem is still available and worth playing, although you don't need to play it to understand and enjoy this one). However, the third game may take a while to appear, if it ever does, because of Ubisoft's buy-out of Microids. So if you want your game to be all wrapped up neatly at the end, you may be disappointed.

I played Still Life in about 20 hours and wished it was longer. It reminded me a lot of both The Longest Journey and Syberia, though with a kind of X-Files twist. This is surely one of the best new games I've played recently.

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55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, Creepy, and Artistic, April 27, 2005

By	Katherine B. Altermatt "pixie468" (Jensen Beach, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

Still Life has met my expectations, but not exceeded them. It's very reminiscent of the Syberia games in terms of the great cinematics (which I believe were even better in this game), story development, and puzzle style. It also had some really great voice talents, writing, and music. I was genuinely frightened during a few parts of the game, biting my nails in anticipation.
I have not played "Post Mortem", which is somewhat of a prequel to this game. That ended up being perfectly fine, because you actually get to play as the character from that game, who is the grandfather of our modern day character, Victoria. Victoria McPherson is an intelligent and motivated character that I liked listening to and controlling very much.
There were only two times when I became overly frustrated with this game, but they were trivial anyway...Victoria some times gets stuck walking in place behind objects, but you can just re-click to your destination and its all good. Also, every time you enter the elevator you have to watch a very annoying 3 second elevator scene. Be prepared for a few minutes of wasted time!
I highly recommend purchasing this game if you are a fan of the third-person adventure game and also if you enjoy horror stories and involved storylines. Still Life is definitely a "mature" game, so consider that if you are wary of the product rating. Oh, and it worked perfect on Windows XP!

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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The good, the bad, and the pretty, June 3, 2005

By	John A. Sigmon (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

"Still Life" has some good elements, some bad elements, and some very pretty artwork!

The Good:

The game has a great story, a must for any mystery/adventure game, and some good dialogue. You will find yourself intrigued by the story, as other reviewers have noted, impressed by the scenic designs (more below), and interested in the characters.

The game was not buggy. I had no trouble with anything I tried to do, and no patches needed to be downloaded or anything.

For me, those things go a long way. But...

The Bad:

The acting was terrible, especially for the African-American characters. They obviously had white Canadians doing all the voices. There was no attempt at an accent for the Czech characters. The American characters sound like Canadians. And the African-American characters sound like some white guys trying to sound like Chris Rock.

As another reviewer mentioned, lots of time is wasted due to the absolute linearity of the events. For example: suppose you are in a room, and you happen to notice a bulge in the wall. You want to investigate the wall, but you realize you'll need to a tool to cut into it. So you remeber a toolbox in another building and think, "I'll bet I need something out of that toolbox."

So you have to do all the walking to get out of the building and into your car. Then click on the map, arrive at the other building, walk inside, walk to where the toolbox is. That takes about three minutes and is very monotonous. You click on the toolbox, only to hear the character say, "I don't need anything in there."

So you backtrack all the way to the building with the bulge in the wall. When you get there, you click on the bulge in the wall. The character says, "I'll need a tool to get at that."

Guess what? Now you have to repeat everything you just did, only this time, it will let you take a tool from the toolbox. This is silly and a waste of time.

I was also horribly disappointed at the ending! I don't want to spoil it, but it was just a big let down.

The pretty:

The art was the best thing about this game. Sets and character models, to the scenery and props, to the oil paintings which are a main part of the story, these guys did an awesome job on the art. First class!
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The style of the game is much like "Sanitarium," "The Black Mirror," etc., but the execution was much better. If you liked those games, you will find "Still Life" interesting enough. All in all, it was not a bad game, but it did let me down from what I expected.