Murder on the Orient Express

I picked up the PC game Murder on the Orient Express at Half Price Books just before the end of the semester. I enjoyed the first Agatha Christie game and this one features Hercule Poirot. Awesome.

The PC is not Poirot, but a young lady named Antoinette that is an employee of the train line. She is a mystery fan and does the leg work for Poirot, who may or may not have sprained his ankle when the avalanche hit the train.

This was pretty basic mystery-game stuff. Question the suspects, search their rooms. There is always a weird way to take fingerprints. In this case it was taking a piece of coal from the engine car, crushing it with a hammer, putting the dust into a turkey baster found in the kitchen and then using tape.

Would not have put that together without the cheats. Or, by the way, how to use the little statue and a punch bowl filled with orange juice to fix the ham radio. Puleeze.

I liked that I was not worried about saving the game all the time. I liked that Poirot was all validating. I did not like that the game forces the PC to validate clues that we already had. For example, we interrogate the Countess and find her true identity. Then we have to research it on the ham radio. Then we are forced to confront her again before moving on. I suspect glitches like this are because there was less structure to the timeline than in many games. You'd think I'd appreciate that.

Anyway, the game did a fine job of sticking to the spirit of the novel as I remember it without the novel giving away the whole thing. For the eight dollars paid, I am happy to continue playing this series.