"Finally!! A game for PUZZLE lovers.......it rules!!!” **SPOILERS**
By,
Scorpio_gamer a.k.a Neerajkumar_4
Introduction:-
Still Life is an adventurous game with awesome puzzles to be solved & an impressive storyline with a gloomy atmosphere. It’s a very challenging game I ever played but it is a bit slow. Though the game had bit of indecent scenes & words, I had fun playing it, solving the puzzles. I enjoyed the story. The game consists of 7 chapters. The puzzle lovers will adore this game.
Story:-
The story starts with our heroine Miss. Victoria McPherson, who is a Special agent from FBI Chicago, at the place of the 5th victim of the serial killer. And her Boss, Todd is behind her all the time. She’s here to analyze the crime scene with the forensic tools, with the help of her partners Miller, Caire & Tate. Here you'll need to collect blood samples & more importantly first take pictures of everything before collecting anything. It feels like you are actually doing all this. She’s on the assignment to solve a case of psycho serial killer or rather a copy cat........I say!
Then after analyzing the crime scene, and visiting the FBI head quarters, she visits her father’s house down in the suburbs to take rest as Christmas is near by, where she finds her grand fathers memoirs. Her grand father Mr. Gustav McPherson worked as a Private eye Detective. Then from here the game keeps switching to present & flashback alternatively. So you keep on playing the alternatively between Gus &Victoria in Prague & Chicago respectively. Now it’s chapter 2 already. Then the game proceeds as a flash black at Prague in 1930's where a similar serial killing is on the move. Here Gus is hired by the local prostitutes for finding the serial killer. There seems to be some kind of link between the present serial killing & the one in 1930.
The game continues as a series of more murders by the serial killer & Victoria is trying to figure out who will be the next victim of him. Once she had almost caught him with an awesome chase but he managed to get away again. In Prague, Gus is roaming all over the place for clues, helping other people & trying to put an end to the serial killing. But at the end Victoria wins the hard fought Battle. I enjoyed Gus's story more than Victoria's.
Game Play:-
As you know it’s an Adventure game clubbed with puzzles. The puzzles in the game are really awesome & challenging. Every puzzle has its own clue. So if you get the clue you can solve the puzzle with a bit of effort & obviously.........common sense. The Lock-Picking & the ‘VODKA’ puzzle is real good. Actually the puzzle 'vodka' is not a puzzle at all, you just have to use of your smart part of your mind, it goes like this how does a person type 'VODKA' in a mobile phone, he presses ‘86352’ so this number is a secret code of ‘vodka’. How is that? There is a Cookery puzzle which can be very annoying but still you get the clues easily, you can still solve it without any cookery classes! At one point, you have to control a robot & dodge all the laser beams. Then there is "Spot the Difference" type puzzles too.
The game is really interesting with a dozen of puzzles to be solved and there is few object finding & object merging things also in this game. And more importantly a person should explore the environment around him thoroughly because in the later part you will need few things to do with the objects you have seen. I mean you will have to use them.
The game is never boring. But the game is kind of slow & the sound is not that great. Yet again the Story-line & graphics fills the gap. So you can have days of fun, until you finish the game. There no different levels of difficulty, there is only one mode to be played.
Graphics:-
The game consists of amazing Graphics without any 3-D acceleration. The level of detail is pretty high. The cut scenes are really very good. The back grounds are pretty realistic, the snow, the buildings, the car, the paintings and everything. Every thing looks so real. Yes even the dead bodies too. So if you don’t want to see the ugly murder scenes I won’t suggest this game for you.
Sound:-
The Sound is not great when compared to Graphics. It is not up to the expected mark but it is still decent. However the background sounds and music are good. The sound & music in the cut-scenes are amazing.
Conclusion:-
However the game can’t be compared to the famous Half-Life 2 because it is a completely different game. The graphic level, the story-line, the game-play & the sound of HL-2 are really superb but still ‘Still-Life’ is not a bad game at all. Yet again remember the puzzles of Still-Life? They are fabulous! According to me Still-Life purely is the game only for puzzle lovers. The ending was cool but who is the killer?? Is it Richard? It is a great suspense, may be the killer is still alive! I can’t wait to get my hands on Still-Life 2; I hope that they are working on it.
Graphics -9/10
Sound-8/10
Gameplay-8/10
Story-Line-10/10
Over all-9/10
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Scorpio_gamer:- “Remember there is NO such thing as GAME OVER!!
So keep GAMING….!!”