Post Mortem (PC)
Yes, it’s from France – but don’t hold that against this game.
By Susie Vee

PLATFORM: PC

PUBLISHER: Dreamcatcher

DEVELOPER: Micriods

GENRE: Adventure

ESRB: Mature

SCORE:

If there’s one news story that seems to come up again and again in the games industry, it’s about the so-called death of the adventure game. It’s become such a cliché by now, that every new adventure title is greeted with the requisite “savior-of-the-genre” story in the press.

Post Mortem, the new adventure game from Dreamcatcher, isn’t going to save any genres or change anyone’s mind about adventure games. But, it’s a solid effort in a category that could use a few more games with this level of professional polish.

The basic story revolves around you, as an American ex-pat private-investigator-turned-painter, looking into some creepy killings in Paris. Fortunately, it doesn’t play quite as goofy as that on-screen.

You’ll go from location to location, questioning suspects, looking for clues and doing all sorts of other standard adventure-game fare.

The game’s main flaw, is that for all it’s spit and polish, it’s trapped by the horribly outdated Myst-style mechanic, where you move from still image to still image, mousing over things to interact with them. It’s a classic pixel-hunt, one of the most derided gameplay elements of all time. Even the current iteration everyone uses, where you can look around a scene in 360 degrees, is needlessly limiting.

Why people still make these non-3D games in this day and age is beyond us, as the newest games are able to reproduce some very photo-realistic graphics in their 3D engines.

That being said, Post Mortem is one of the more accessible takes on this type of gameplay. The environments are colorful and the interaction seems logical, at least in gameplay terms. Moving around is easy, and for the most part, Post Mortem avoids the disorientation that you often get in static screen games.

Another thing to like about this game is the large amount of character interaction. Unlike the de-populated worlds of Myst and its brethren, the Paris of Post Mortem is teeming with various sorts of lowlife.

The conversation trees with characters are deep, with branching paths that can lead to different results. This is a welcome change from games where a dialogue tree just means you can ask the same five question in any order and get the same responses.

Puzzles are generally more logic-based than most other adventure games. They at least seem to have some kind of connection to the plot, and involve real-world objects, not obscure mechanical locks.

Another nice touch is the wide variety of puzzle types that keep the action from getting stale. Some unique ones include putting together a suspect sketch from police descriptions and spotting the differences in two (almost) identical paintings.

Voice acting – of which there is a lot – is generally above average. Although the writers and most of the voice actors are clearly French, and this leads to a lot of general awkwardness in the lines.

Despite avoiding the long-standing genre convention of a female lead character, Post Mortem is still a well-executed, easily accessible adventure game. Girl gamers looking for a change of pace from the shoot-em-up action that’s been so prevalent lately won’t mind this quick side trip to Paris.