Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Mysterious: MMM: Murder Most Misfortunate

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  6 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 172023
 

Murder Most Misfortunate is a visual novel with adventure game elements in which you play as a high society lady named Miss Fortune, who is invited to join a private gathering at a secluded mansion, only for one of them to be murdered.

When a bloody dagger shows up in her purse, Miss Fortune decides to investigate the crime to find the killer before she herself is blamed.

Miss Fortune is an… interesting protagonist. A widow with 9 dead husbands behind her, she’s the sort of character who will politely warn characters that it’s unhealthy to upset her while standing by an open window. She is sarcastic, morbid, and not especially concerned about the people around her.

The game is split into three acts: Act 1 to set up the story, Act 2 to allow the player to investigation, and Act 3 to call everyone together and reveal the culprit.

During Act 2, the game takes on a point-and-click adventure format in which you visit each room of the mansion to inspect objects in the environment, gather evidence, and talk to characters to gain more information. Sometimes, information you learn unlocks additional conversation options that could lead to new clues. While investigating environments, you have to scroll from one side to the other by bringing the mouse to the edge of the screen, which I found a little annoying, but everything else is fine.

You choose when to advance to Act 3, which means it’s possible to start the confrontation without the evidence that you need. If you want to make it a bit more difficult, there is an option to make the second act timed. If time runs out before you’re ready, you proceed to the third act anyway.

Once you’ve gathered everyone together, it’s time for you to accuse another guest of murder and present the evidence to show how they did it. The most interesting thing about Murder Most Misfortunate is that you can support an argument against any other character. While one character is the true culprit, with the most fleshed out ending, each of the others has an ending in which they’re arrested if you’ve found the right evidence to make your case against them.

Murder Most Misfortunate is a short game, taking only a couple of hours to beat, but it’s an enjoyable mystery with added entertainment from being able to pursue a case against any character.

Celebrating All Things Mysterious: Chicken Police – Looks Can Be Deceiving

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  7 Responses »  Tagged with:
May 152023
 

Mystery games with animals in the lead roles seem oddly popular, with Aviary Attorney being one of the most notable ones we’ve discussed in the past.

And another such game is Chicken Police – Paint it RED, an adventure game styled after classic film noir detective stories in which you play Sonny, a once-famous detective now on forced leave who reunites with his estranged partner to solve one last case.

It is set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, but unlike the more stylized approach of games like Aviary Attorney, the character designs in Chicken Police are photorealistic humans with animal heads. The effect is uncanny and somewhere between terrifying and hilarious.

But… the more I played, the more I got used to them. By the time I reached the end of the game, the designs felt almost normal.

You see, Chicken Police handles its world in such a way that I could immerse myself in it and believe the setting despite its bizarre presentation. When I saw the character models and heard the film noir narration (with the main character delivering an impressive Humphrey Bogart impression), I expected it to be a parody.

But while it definitely has humor and funny nods to the genre, Chicken Police plays its premise straight. It is a gritty detective story, and since it takes itself seriously, I can look past the fact that I’m playing as a human-shaped chicken in a trench coat and start seeing who he is as a character. It’s a dark story at times that deals with mature themes, although the undercurrent of humor keeps it from getting too bleak.

The adventure game elements in Chicken Police are light, with only a handful of puzzles. Most of your time will be spent visiting locations and talking to characters.

During key conversations, you’ll be able to question a character in a special sequence where you must choose the right questions to ask to either increase or decrease the character’s opinion of you while trying to avoid being steered off-topic. At the end of these segments, you’re graded based on how well you did, with the option to retry if you want a better score. There are a handful of mini-games segments, as well.

In between required story scenes, other areas open up for you to visit for optional conversations. There is a ton of optional dialogue and worldbuilding details in this game. If you’re like me, the sort of player who likes to inspect everything and exhaust every conversation option, you’ll be rewarded with nearly every visit and revisit to a location having new conversations both for talking to characters and inspecting items in the background. Everything is fully voiced, too.

All of this results a world built up beyond the details that pertain to the main plot, which is part of what helps it stand out. The case in Chicken Police – Paint it RED is wrapped up by the end, but it leaves open the possibility of further Chicken Police stories to come… and that’s something I’d definitely like to see.

Celebrating All Things Mysterious: Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
May 122023
 

After talking about Cruise in the Distant Seas on Monday and Gear Detective on Wednesday, it’s now time to conclude our look at the Parascientific Escape trilogy with the final entry.

While the first two games were largely separate despite a few connections, Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon brings them together and serves a sequel to both.

Hitomi travels to the country of Witsarock in response to a letter from “the Ghost,” while Kyosuke visits Witsarock to meet a man who has information for him, only to find he’s been murdered.

The story alternates between the two characters, as well as other characters, in order to tell a bigger story than that of its predecessors. With both protagonists coming together and the antagonist’s plot being brought into the light at last, it has the potential to be the best in the series.

Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Crossing at the Farthest Horizon plays nearly identically to Gear Detective. With both Hitomi and Kyosuke as protagonists, I’d hoped both their psychic powers would come into play (perhaps even others, when I saw other characters getting viewpoint sections), but the handful of escape room sections only let you play as Kyosuke.

Some of the puzzles feel less intuitive, and the hint system isn’t as helpful as in Gear Detective. Worse, at one point the memo used to record puzzle details simply left off the final line of a puzzle by mistake, which had me stuck for quite a while.

It also has far more typos than either of the previous two games, not enough to be a big problem, but enough to be noticeable.

Playing this third game also made me understand why I criticize these stories’ idealistic approaches to their problems. After all, I normally eat up stories about redemption and the power of friendship. In the Parascientific Escape series, however, developments occur so quickly that it doesn’t feel natural. It’s hard to buy a character desperate to save a murderer she considers a friend when they’ve only known each other for a few hours. It’s difficult to be emotionally invested in a villain’s redemption when you’ve only seen them on-screen a handful of times.

Click for Parascientific Escape spoilers
This goes double for anything involving romance. How did Yukiya end up interested in Ritsu? I know they met briefly in Gear Detective, but Crossing at the Farthest Horizon has him wanting to ask her out, and it felt like it came out of nowhere.

Unrelated to that, Iori also felt like an unnecessary addition, when keeping Ritsu as the main antagonist could have allowed her to be more fleshed out.

Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon has some exciting moments and some interesting puzzles, and it’s nice to see the first two games’ stories brought to a resolution. If you were hoping for it to build upon its predecessors and be the best of the three, however, you might be disappointed.

The mystery unfortunately takes a backseat once again, as well. We’ve now covered all three entries as part of our mystery game celebration, but the second is the only one I’d really call a mystery.

But don’t worry! We’re not even halfway through the month yet, so stay tuned for next week as we discuss even more mystery games!

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