Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express test

My last article was also about a Poirot game, so I can safely say that Agatha Christie is being dumped. Which I don’t mind at all. I love a good adventure game, especially detective games. They usually have a good story, but I’m always interested in the game mechanics: how do the developers manage to not only progress linearly through the story, but also prove that we can see through the machinations and understand who is suspicious and why? In the case of Poirot, whatever the mechanics, these mini-games are of course always called gray brain cells, as the little Belgian regularly refers to.

But to make a game out of a story that has already been adapted into numerous movies and adventure games since the novel was published? It wasn’t entirely clear whether we were going to be happy about it or not. Everyone who wasn’t born yesterday and can already read knows the story exactly and knows who the murderer is. What will the game be like? I hope that this question arises not only in me, but also in the readers. So let’s get started with this!

The developers of the new Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express game kept the original story. They touched it very little. They only changed one or two small things. So the investigation is not that difficult, since we know the outcome – you don’t have to pay attention to every detail. But this base – the backbone of the game – only accounts for a third of the playing time. We have to solve another third with a new character, an American detective. We have to detect and investigate the Armstrong murder mentioned in the novel. While the third third is given by the events after the story of the novel. The train arrives in Venice – where he was trying in the novel – and the investigation continues on a new thread.

So, even though we know the story back and forth, it is worth starting this new adaptation as well. And of course, the well-known parts won’t be boring either, just a little easier. And if for some strange reason the dear reader has never seen a film adaptation (and was not lucky enough to read the novel either), then the game is definitely recommended, because it is based on one of Agatha Christie’s best stories.

And the fact that the whole thing was moved to our time doesn’t make it worse. In fact, a bit into the near future, because we are in December 2023. It’s a really weird idea – and we as players feel a bit like this change was invented during the development of the game. The present tense doesn’t really add anything, but it makes the whole thing very strange. The clothes, for example, are not 2023 at all. Not even when the wearers of the clothes pull smartphones out of their pockets. Then there is the massive snowfall that is important to the story. It hasn’t snowed this much in the Balkans for decades. Of course, it might happen this year, but I’d be surprised. The environment – the interior of the Orient Express – can be explained as a nostalgia trip, but very anachronistic. Although it is a fact that it is at least elaborated in detail. In contrast to the outer parts: Belgrade – the capital of Serbia – consists of three houses and a Catholic church (Serbians are not Catholic).

The graphics are also quite outdated. There is an Orient Express adventure game from 2006, and the difference is not obvious. It’s not bad anyway: the caricature-like characters are interesting or funny. Although I did not manage to make friends with the character of Poirot at all. In this game, the protagonist is not a fragile Belgian detective. More like a Birmingham drifter, who I definitely don’t want to run into in a dark alley. It doesn’t show that his strength is not in his muscles, but in his gray cells.

Having said that, the gray brain cell interface – in which the game mechanics part of the investigation takes place – is in many ways much better than in the two parts of the Poirot reboot (The First Cases and The London Case): it is more meaningful to figure out what needs to be connected with what. What’s more, we don’t just have to connect events, we have to prove that we understand what happened with fairly varied mini-games. I love detective games, and one of my favorite minigames is when I have to put the events in the right order. This was also included in this game, which – at least for me – greatly reduced the enjoyment. In addition to these, we get the usual classic puzzles. But they’re pretty good too.

I don’t usually rate the sound of games separately, because for me it is not as important as the visuals, but in this case I have to mention that for some reason it was very weak. The acting work is also quite sparse, but the quality of the recorded sound also leaves some room for criticism. Added to this is the movement of the characters, which is more reminiscent of the gesticulations of marionette figures. Of course, we cannot expect expensive motion capture in an adventure game, but already in the first part of Syberia, the characters moved more lifelike.

It is practically impossible to get stuck in the known part of the story. But in the new parts I succeeded a couple of times. And since there was understandably no playthrough online before its release, I was forced to get out of it myself. Therefore, a good tip that can be used to avoid traffic jams: a white circle with a dot appears for every important thing (hot spot). And if everything (even its subsections) has been examined, it turns gray. So if something is white and we think we’ve already looked at it, then it’s worth going in there and pressing everything there. Once I had to look at photos on a computer, and the next step was clear to me from the photo, but I didn’t press the white circle – because of this, the main character didn’t notice it, and even though I knew what to do, it wasn’t possible.

There were a few negative comments at the end, but I think the main point is that the developers of Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express were able to skillfully implement a well-known story in the form of a game, so that it is not boring, and they also produced extra content for it . It is clear that the story of the great British writer is the main thing, and the added product can never live up to it, but the fact that the game does not end when we name the killer is a big red point. Compared to the last two Poirot games, the mini-games and puzzles are much more colorful and enjoyable, which make it pleasant to play through the already known story, which gives us about 12 hours of playing time.

The test copy was provided by the game publisher.