Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The First Case Review (Switch)

Mystery fans will have been on the lookout for Hercule Poirot: The First Cases After The Gruesome Crime Scene That Was The ABC Murders. The Belgian detective’s latest arrival on Switch is again courtesy of French publisher Microids, but the developer this time is Blazing Griffin, who has engaged with the Ardennian gumshoe in a very different way.

While Artefact Studio’s The ABC Murders sought to put you in the shoes of the northern European hound, First Cases puts you in the shoes of, well, you, reading a novel by Poirot. If you expect to be solving puzzles yourself, and neither Blazing Griffin nor Microids have done much to discourage that expectation, you will be wrinkling your mustache before Chapter 2. Leave your assumptions, however, and you will see an enlightening interpretation of the visual novel that plays with the dots. strengths of Agatha Christie’s timeless creation.

The First Cases tells a new Poirot story with all the most beloved tropes of upper-class intrigues, love affairs and quarrels, and of course the slaughter of an irresponsible individual for the sake of our entertainment. You walk Poirot with the joystick in a fixed perspective 3D environment, examining scenes and talking to people to discover the story fact for fact. This structure is supported by a second interface, the mind map, in which all your events are organized and planned in a logical diagram. The cycle is walking / examining / talking to add facts to the map, then connecting the facts on the map to drive Poirot’s deductions, opening up more opportunities to explore the world.

This arrangement makes The First Cases play like a highly interactive visual novel rather than an adventure game. Your progress is inevitable and doesn’t really depend on your wits, but in exchange for giving up that agency, you save yourself the adventure game frustration of being stuck in an obtuse puzzle for years. The mind map gives you the opportunity to demonstrate some understanding and logical thinking, but it also tells you both explicitly, with to-do lists and bookmarks to show which connections you have already tried, and implicitly, with connections often indicated by the orderly. which is the line. I would search the map. From time to time we resort to trial and error, but the game makes this very bearable, making its pages turn as well as a good book.

This mapping of story details is wonderfully suited to the classic detective genre, which is all about clearly defined mystery and the constant supply of clues and red herrings for the reader. It’s easy to imagine Poirot using this schematic plot exploration to sort his thoughts and tie up loose ends, or imagine Agatha Christie doing the same as she writes. It also serves those of us with more modern attention spans than Christie originally wrote, by summarizing what was relevant in any conversation and adding it to the map. The classic denouement is slightly subverted when you already know what Poirot has solved, but there is an ease of use to telling the audience once, then telling them what they were told, and the pantomime of touching the perpetrator is no less fun.

As wonderful as the possibilities are, not everything works perfectly. The mind map employs a system in which a question mark indicates a fact that must be connected to something. That is fine and useful, essential for the great usability of the system, but it seems that you really need to answer the question that is written. In fact, you only need to find a relevant associated fact, which may not address the question at all. For example, at the beginning of the game you must deduce that certain rooms are closed because the staff is preparing for an event. Although you can see two closed doors and are asked why they are closed, you cannot connect them to the fact that staff are busy until you have connected them to each other.

These trial-and-error click parties take on particularly chilling relief when Poirot finally connects mud footprints with an adjacent mud puddle and exclaims aloud to himself: “A moment of genius!” In fact, you have to learn to read the language of the game, which does not actually match an intuitive reading in plain English. Once you get over that hurdle, it’s consistent, but it’s a real hurdle for player onboarding.

Unfortunately, there are more shortcomings. While the cast of characters has a conveniently prominent place in the game interface (a separate tab next to the mind map), in the game world they have no actual existence except as golems to dispense dialogue, appearing and disappearing from sets like the Plot logic demands. They remain useless in cavernous rooms, staring, swaying, until Poirot’s mere thoughts cause the world to transform to its next state. Poirot’s “order and method” are present and correct, but the heart and soul are absent.

There are many positives. The images are attractive, yet simple, on screens large and small. There is some stuttering, but it is rare and not too bothersome. The voice acting is extensive and entertaining, if not always on purpose; some of the accents in particular are irresistibly hammy. The mind map interface is smooth and satisfying and overall feel The game is like getting comfortable with a mystery novel: perfect.

conclusion

First Cases is a significant change in direction from The ABC Murders, Poirot’s latest outing also published by Microids. Comfortably entering the territory of the visual novel and putting aside the bewilderment that would slow down the narrative flow, his fantasy is not that of being Hercule Poirot, but of enjoying a Poirot novel. The Switch lets you enjoy that just like you would a great book, whether it’s in the library wing of your manor house, or indeed on the toilet in your bedroom. For storytelling, the game’s format is ideal, even ingenious. Christie’s trademark web of connections between events, evidence, and character psychology is planned before your eyes, whether you’re studying a diagram or wandering through carefully presented settings. The main limitations of the game are the inanimate world and everyday writing that do not bring the brightness of life to a well-crafted story. However, while puzzle-loving gamers shouldn’t choose this one, visual novel fans and Hercules won’t be able to put it down.