Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Thoughts On "Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet" (iOS)

Death in Scarlet is a hidden object game based on James Patterson's "Women's Murder Club" series of books, and it puts you into the shoes of the characters from the novels as you attempt to solve a murder. For those not in the know, hidden object games are pretty much as the name implies - You have a 'scene' and you have to find items from a list; Usual fare includes keys, tools and other objects.

So, what's it like? Well... It's not great, but it's not exactly terrible, although it could be better. The gameplay is ridiculously repetitive, even for hidden object games. Many of the scenes are recycled a number of times with minimal changes in the position of items (If any change) with little variation in the list you have to find. For example, one scene is of a police officer's desk, and I must have been there about four times at this point, perhaps even five. The art style changes, too. Mostly it's 'realistic' art, but it does go to photographs/CG sometimes and I've even seen some panels that seemed to be taken from the pages of a comic.

Technically it's not perfect, either. There's no Retina support, but it doesn't look bad on the iPod Touch 4G as it upsizes quite nicely. I also feel that it's got a bit of a problem with detecting where you've touched the screen; Often it'd be a few millimetres out, making the smaller items a little frustrating to pick up. A few scenes are also very dark, and combined with the darkness and size of some objects it can be quite frustrating to get everything you need.

Are there actually any good points to this game? Well, I suppose. The music is quite fitting, although it's quite repetitive.

Uh... Yeah. I'm actually not disliking this game despite the huge number of flaws. Strange, huh?

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