| Still Life review |
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Adult Gaming is a term that is bandied about far too often these days. Whether it be the smutty titillation of Singles or the Nu Metal “attitude” of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, "juvenile" is often mistaken for "adult" and used as a marketing tool to attract the easily influenced. It's sick, it's wrong and it can make it embarrassing to be a games fan. There are games out there, though, that will genuinely appeal to real adults. Games with complex, emotive stories that have something interesting to say. Still Life is one of those games.
The premise is simple enough: an FBI agent is investigating a series of murders that are very similar to a serial murder case that her grandfather solved in the twenties. The player must play through each investigation in alternating chapters so that both stories conclude at the same time. As the player begins to realise that the similarity between the two cases may be more than a coincidence the converging plot lines create twists and turns that would otherwise not exist.
The maturity of Still Life’s story is second to none and, unfortunately, cannot be discussed in detail without spoiling many of the key plot points. We can reveal, however, that the parallel stories force the player to look at each situation in a new way after each chapter ends and the conclusion is one that will leave most speculating long after they have powered the Xbox down. We cannot stress enough how important the story is to Still Life. It will draw players back time and again until the game is finished and it is what they will spend most of the working day contemplating until they return home to continue the adventure.
There’s always a catch though and this time the engrossing story comes at the expense of interaction. With puzzles that are often tediously simple and occasionally over-difficult, Microids have struggled to implement a consistent challenge in Still Life. The vast majority of the puzzles have simple "fetch and use" solutions where the required item is always in the same area as the problem. Still Life does nothing to challenge the mighty LucasArts games of old - it just cannot compete with the epic sprawl of items and lateral thinking that was required to finish the likes of Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island. There is the odd puzzle that will have some scratching their heads but most are unfair as they rely on knowledge or skills that exist outside of the game's world. One particular example requires the player to bake some gingerbread men with an incomplete recipe and if they do not have experience of baking in the real world it can become a frustrating session of guesswork. The most rewarding puzzles are those that require the player to perform actual detective work. Like a member of TV’s CSI they will find themselves dusting for prints, taking blood samples, comparing crime photos to crime scenes and performing autopsies. If Still Life had more of these puzzles then it would be a far superior game.
Questioning witnesses and suspects can be fun too. Conversational choices are limited to two sentences per line of dialogue, each represented by a shoulder button: L will ask an investigative question whilst R will ask a personal question. It’s the only freedom of choice that exists in the dialogue but it is a welcome one nonetheless and can often be valuable for those who want to get the most from the story as the personal questions provide insight into the characters that the main plot does not.
Complementing the excellent story and providing a backdrop to the so-so puzzles are some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds the Xbox has yet seen. When running in 720p every background looks stunning and really adds a rich and detailed atmosphere to the proceedings. The in-game visuals look so good, in fact, that the occasional FMV sequences never look out of place or become irksome as many similar cinematics sometimes can. You might even say that the FMV is enjoyable.
All good things must come to an end though and like those other good things Still Life is over far too quickly. Although it isn’t as short as recent offerings like Fahrenheit and Another Code it can still be finished in two or three evenings and could have done with one more act to flesh out the conclusion. Speaking of which (without giving too much away) the ending has been received rather poorly by some Still Life players. The player’s hard detective work is not properly rewarded and some may leave wishing for a stronger finale. Others will admire Microids’ unwillingness to feed the player every last plot element but in the end it comes down to a matter of personal taste and storytelling preference.
As a complete package Still Life is a very enjoyable adventure game, its lack of engaging puzzles does sometimes make it feel more like an interactive novel than a game but that in no way detracts from the quality of the product. Here is a well-crafted, good-looking and mature work of fiction that shows a lot of promise for the future of adventure games. If only it was a bit more of a brain teaser.
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System: Microsoft Xbox
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Microids
Publisher: MC2
Players: 1
Version: European
Reviewed: Mar 2006
Writer: Ashley Day
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Pros:
- Good voice acting
- Excellent presentation
- Engrossing story
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Cons:
- Some puzzles too easy
- and some too hard
- Unrewarding ending
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