Still Life

"Clever Title for a Murder Mystery Game"

Still Life is a form of art that depicts subjects that are inanimate...that is dead so to say. In Still Life the game you are Victoria McPherson who is investigating a murder that she finds to be very similar to one her grandfather encountered as a private investigator in Europe. The game is a sequel to the PC game Post Mortem where Gustav McPherson, the grandfather, was the main character. Still Life is a very original game that although is a transplanted PC game to the Xbox, is still a wonderful and challenging point and click adventure played in the third person. Fans of the Syberia series should be very familiar with the game play as the developer Microids also produced this game. Still Life 2 is supposed to be released after many delays sometime in 2009 so before I forget what this series is about let's review why we should be eagerly anticipating the next game.

Story

You are FBI special agent Victoria McPherson who begins an investigation into the recent murder of an unidentified woman in a run down apartment complex in Chicago. After a fun close up examination of the body you will have to start determining who the murderer is and it is not long before you encounter an odd suspect wearing a top hat, cloak, and mask. From there more murders are committed and after a quick trip back to Victoria's house to visit her dad and make the special Christmas cookies, Victoria takes a nostalgia trip to the attic and finds out her grandfather had encountered a case that is very similar to the one she is currently investigating. From there the story jumps to the grandfather Gustav and plays out in the fashion that she is reading his narration of what had happened in the case he was involved in. The climax of the story holds your attention until the very disappointing end where you do not have any of the case figured out or resolved. The murderer remains unaccounted for and unknown and you are then left waiting as I have been for some three years now for the sequel which may continue where Still Life leaves off.

While the plot leaves you hanging the characters are still very developed and are pretty interesting. The coroner Claire Ashby immediately reminded me of my supervisor at the dog kennel where I used to work. There are also a lot of funny characters that stand out such as Victoria's dad who has quite the appetite for holiday cookies so you will enjoy the people that Victoria interacts with. The plot is intricately detailed and is very suspenseful, but it seems to me that with a lot of detail the focus of the game gets derailed and in the end it isn't determined why the murderer is so much associated with art or if any of the characters are actual suspects so you feel kind of cheated when the game attempts to imitate the murderer as a Jack the Ripper character.

Game Play

You have simple controls in the third person just like Syberia. It is point and click all the way through as you enter and exit through different frames in the game. You may have to look carefully for clues and your pointer will highlight them if you move over them so it is rather easy to get around in this game. What is very challenging is the difficulty of the puzzles in the game. There is no way that you can get through this game without the help of some sort of guide or walkthrough. If anybody reading this review did make it through Still Life without any help then you must be quite the puzzle solver and deserve to be filling a politician's cabinet position somewhere because this is one tough game! As with these point and click adventures you run into many obstacles to solve or get past to be able to move on and some of these obstacles are very difficult without help. Baking the cookies about did it for me. Although it was a unique thing to get to do in such a mature game the recipe ingredients were hard to figure out for me, and I actually ended up solving the puzzle with the help of my mom who would know such things about recipes. However the challenge gets harder from there and I know of at least one more very difficult obstacle that was hard to get past.

The challenge level is excellent and the interaction with clues and characters really drive this game forward.

Sound/Graphics

Since you move from frame to frame each place will have some very detailed graphics to make this game very fun to watch. A couple of videos also add to the story and and dark mood that this game sets. While you are out in the depths of night searching dead bodies for clues the game is set during the Christmas holiday season and I got one nostalgic feeling when I got to the parents house with the snow falling and the Christmas lights blinking. The graphics are really great for a transplanted PC game and if you are familiar with Syberia then you will know what I am talking about.

The music is not as memorable, but there is plenty of voice acting in the game that I found to be very good to helping drive the plot and game play. The interaction with the characters shows that each has a different voice and that gives them a different personality so no one character you run into is going to be mundane or unoriginal.

There are some very mature graphics and themes in this game so bear in mind this is no Syberia.

Replay Value

While the challenge of Still Life will keep you confounded for quite a while the game is pretty much like reading a good mystery book from start to finish. Once you beat this game you will definitely not be likely to pick it up again. Still Life is a very well laid out and detailed game, but it is also a linear experience so you may not care to play through it all over again. Of course if you have the game it would probably be worth hanging on to since a sequel is somewhere out there in the works.

Final Recommendation 7/10

Despite the setbacks of Still Life being very challenging and leaving you clueless at the end it is still the best murder mystery game for the Xbox and has way too much to offset the problems I found with it. Although I did not hang on to Still Life as I did with the Syberia games it still got me into the Microids way of things and I did enjoy the game play. Still Life is not available to be played on the 360 as Syberia 2 is which is kind of a disappointment and with the very mature themes of the game it isn't even offered on the game catalogue of the Xbox Live website. So with that in mind I would say that this game does have a limited audience that also has patience to solve the puzzles and challenges in this game. If you are not familiar with any of the Microids games then I would actually suggest you try Syberia, but if you want a good murder mystery game on a console then Still Life is definitely a good choice.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/08

Game Release: Still Life (US, 06/06/05)