When it comes to naming British crime authors Agatha Christie is the top of many lists. Despite this fact there’s been a surprising lack of video games based on her work. There have been even fewer that saw a wide release on consoles, with most being PC only. In fact the last game that saw a release on a console was a Nintendo DS title back in 2009 called Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders.
It is important to bring this up because the newest game based on the works of Agatha Christie that is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam is called… Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders. Despite the same namesake don’t be fooled in to thinking this is just a quick port of an old DS game. This is a new game built from the ground up by a completely different publisher and developer team. The ABC Murders just happens to be one of the more popular works of Agatha Christie.
It’s a good way to introduce you to the lead character of Poirot in video game form. The ABC Murders is an intriguing story about a serial killer that goads the Belgian detective with letters to try and stop them. There seems to be some kind of pattern and, as usual, Poirot spots things Scotland Yard miss. The plot is a great way to set up Poirot for what he is: A great detective that can solve even the toughest of cases.
You crack the cases in the style of a modern point and click game. Solving puzzles, investigating crime scenes and talking to witnesses and suspects. The point and click problem solving parts of the game are interesting and varied enough to stop you from getting bored. The main issue comes from talking to other people.
The voice actor for Poirot does a fairly good job in delivering his lines, despite a few odd stumbles here and there. Nearly everyone else, however, delivers a performance so wooden that you could mistake them for trees. On quite a few occasions you’ll hear Poirot pass a comment that a person is upset or distressed. If he didn’t say this you wouldn’t really be able to know.
It’s not just the voice acting that is an issue. The lack of any real lip sync makes any emotion that does appear in the voice fall even flatter. The art style and animations also fail to really portray emotions effectively. They’ve gone for that cell shaded style that Telltale have made popular but the faces are much cleaner than in Telltale games. This wouldn’t be an issue if the facial animations were tight but, much like the lip sync, it’s fairly non existent. Things are made slightly better if you switch to the French dub track, where they at least show emotion, but then the point of Poirot being a foreigner in the UK is kind of lost. It’s a shame because the English dub should be the priority considering the setting of the game is the United Kingdom. Instead we are left with actors that struggle to live up to a great crime story.
The ABC Murders is a head scratcher from the offset and you will be spurred on to figure out each element of the crime to get to the bottom of it all. The puzzles work well, although some are quite fiddly on the DualShock 4. The game does compensate this fact slightly with a button that helps solve the next part of your puzzle in the pause menu. It has a cool down to stop you spamming it, which is a good call. It means that you have some time to ponder your next step before accepting you’re stuck again. By doing this it opens its accessibility whilst still offering a challenge to those that want it.
Despite my many issues with the game I found the puzzles, crime scene investigation and story quite compelling. So much so they easily kept me playing until the end. The delivery of lines, bad lip sync and stiff animations, however, detract quite a bit from the experience. If this was a mid budget game it would be easier to forgive, but with a RRP of £34.99 it’s hard to let it slide.
Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders is a solid start to what will hopefully be a new franchise. It reminds me quite a bit of Frogwares Sherlock Holmes series, which took a few games to find its stride. The games focus on building up the character of Poirot and focusing on telling the story from his perspective pays off. In part due to Poirot being the most interesting character in the game. I’m excited to see how the series improves, because it has a lot of potential. It will need to focus on improving some of the basics first though to justify its price tag.
If you’d like to see me playing the game check out my let’s play below.