Great Premise, but Lacking in Execution
The storyline of this game is possibly one of the most intense I've seen in the genre. In fact, the story is worthy of novelization in its own right, with or without a videogame adaptation. It centers around an FBI agent investigating a series of murders in Chicago which seem to mirror a case in Prague in the 1920s. The FBI agent discovers that her grandfather was a private investigator on the Prague case, and uses clues from the past to attempt to solve the murder in the present. The game's execution takes an interesting twist in that the player will alternate between the modern investigation, and the investigation from the past, in each gaming chapter. Along the way is typical adventure gaming fare -- lots of witty banter, listening to many discussions between the protagonist and the other characters, following clues, and solving puzzles. Most of the puzzles are unique and well-designed, and present a challenge that will force you to think, but won't tax you beyond your abilities.
Graphically the game is a marvel. The backgrounds are very well laid out, with a talented artistic attention to detail at its prerendered locations, whether they be classic locations in Prague thick with gothic architecture, nicely laid out American homes, crime labs, modern art galleries, or decaying buildings used as crime scenes. The murder victim layouts are graphically gruesome, and don't try to visual hide the nature of serial murder. Without revealing too much, there is a lot of original artwork that has been designed as part of the mystery, and this art work and its corresponding symbolism is so well done, that it speaks to the hand of a dedicated artist. Sound effects in the game are sparse, and there isn't much background music, but when there is, its fitting and genuinely creepy. The game begins and ends on two nice selections from Mozart's Requiem Mass, specifically "Dies Irae" and "Confutatis", respectively. These are very fitting for the artsy-classico core of the storyline, and work well to set the mood and end the game.
All of these plusses together would seem to add up to a major game in the genre, perhaps the best in its history, and although that was certainly the potential, it falls short in many ways in the gameplay department. One of the most obvious is the dubious nature of certain puzzle elements. While most of the puzzles are fitting, challenging, and very well-designed, some of the puzzles are for mundane tasks that have nothing to do with actually solving the mystery of the game, and add no revelation to the storyline in general. Among these are housekeeping tasks, such as getting the boss a cup of coffee, or baking good old dad some of his favorite Christmas cookies, the latter of which actually turns out to be a pretty complex puzzle for something which doesn't add anything at all to the storyline revelation. The fact that the game insists that you do these things before you can progress is almost unforgivable, and bespeaks of developers who are desperate to give their game some beefing up.
Some of the other puzzles, though fun to play through, don't really resolve to anything important either. For instance, investigatory tasks at the beginning of the game are fun to do but somewhat tedious in execution, requiring a very specific order of events to gather evidence at a crime scene. This would be a very fitting thing if it helped to solve the mystery, or if the game were more open-ended, and it was up to the gamer to decide which evidence mattered or helped in the investigation. Out of all of this, perhaps one or two clues actually have relevance, but these only appear in a very late part of the game, in a very planned way. In this sense, the player of this game is expected to act almost as a thinking algorithm -- able to enjoy the story from afar, but only able to participate in a very proscribed manner. This isn't an uncommon formula in this gaming genre, but it seems much more cemented in this game than most other adventure games.
The ending is extremely anti-climactic and leaves the player very underwhelmed. The developers clearly hope to make a sequel, and laid out a setup for one, but some resolution was really needed at this point to make the game worth playing through, especially considering that nothing you've done in the game will allow the player to do more than guess at the ultimate answer to the mystery. These minuses aside, the game is cripplingly brief: having finished the game between six and seven hours following a purposefully linear path with no real chance of meaningful variation, the game is very short and strongly lacks in replay value.
I guess I expected more from this game: something more open-ended, and gratifying, such as from other masterpieces in adventure gaming, such as the "Broken Sword" series, "Syberia", and the recent masterpiece "Indigo Prophecy" (called "Fahrenheit" in most countries). In a lot of ways, the potential was there, but the direction just didn't go far enough to make the game a clear winner. Nonetheless, in spite of all of this, I can't rate the game too low. I enjoyed the game immensely for the storyline alone, regardless of its ungratifying ending. It has a low overall value, both in duration and replay, but is low-priced enough to make that a passing consideration. Its surely worth a purchase for fans of the adventure gaming genre, and at least a rental from fans of storyline driven games.