Game Review: The ABC Murders based on Agatha Christies Novel

Cover of The ABC Murders- I have the PC version but this had the right cover

I have been into games for a good portion of my life. My favorites are Adventure, Mystery, or Hidden Object.  I always like it when a game is done well and I think Microids who produced the game did a great job on this.  It is done in a slightly different style than a couple of the other Agatha Christie games I have seen such as And Then There Were None or Murder on the Orient Express.  In this one its like you jumped into the novel, which is illustrated ( which I dont think they actually were) but the characters and all the surroundings have a drawn look.  You can move around and pick up things etc like in  the other games.   The characters just look different than seen on this cover. The attention to detail for the surroundings is very spot on for the time period, and how you see it in the films. Poirot's apartment looks like his apartment. In fact every area looks like you have seen on the tv, just in a illustrated way. One cool thing is you can turn objects totally around and on their side, see all the different parts of it these objects do have a a 3d look to them and not so illustrated when examined.

As you can see here, this is the style they  have the characters in.   One thing that took me a bit of time to get used it the difference in the creators idea of what some of the characters look like. I got so used Hugh Frasier for example looking like Hastings, I didn't expect him to have this look. Poirot looks a like but not totally like David Suchet where as Inspector Japp who is played by Phillip Jackson on film again kind of does kind of doesn't look like the Japp I have gotten to know but perhaps they were going more of what Agatha Christie might of had these characters look like even though how  David Suchet played him was pretty much it.  Once I got past that, the game is very good and does follow the storyline as it is very well.  It does miss out  some things seen in the film of it, like the movie theatre where someone is killed there.  Things are interactive, puzzles are hard enough they take you more than a minute to solve.  You have to observe things only for some activities and point out things about a scene you find out of place, or of interest to the case. You get to talk to those who knew the victims. You get to study the victims themselves.  All the things you see Poirot do either if reading the novels or watching the shows, you see him do here.  This was good because you feel like you are part of the game.  Its very addicting I have to say.  The first night I played it I stayed up way late.  Always a good sign of a good game if you cant tear yourself away. ( even though you should )

One other thing I found different is even though this game comes with a CD, it doesn't really use it for the actual game.  The game is actually run on the site Steam.  This surprised me as most of my games have been CD or online only ( like LOTR, yes I play that too!)   This one came with a code you put into your account on Steam which once set up lets you download the game and you play it from their site.  Once you figure that out its easy to play from there and things run fine.


Things I wish they did a bit different:   The drawing of the characters are ok, but I kind of like the polished look that I have seen in other games,  Its higher quality than the cheap Poirot games I have seen on Big Fish ( the Hidden Object ones)  but not as polished as the other games I have mentioned or like Nancy Drew games  ( which new ones I am sorely missing and wishing they would do!!!) I also think they made Poirot's accent a bit funny, I know he is Belgian but there are words not even he would mispronounce as wrongly as the person doing this voice does. I also wonder where  Miss Lemon is, she was in the film and I am sure in the book.  It is also hard sometimes to get the controls you need to interact, you have to hold down the mouse to see them and they come up quickly.  Other than those which are small things, its a great game and I highly recommend it.

Bought from Walmart. Cost $20.00.