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Categories: Review
Tags: adventure, agatha christie, and then there were none, wii
And Then There Were None
Developer: AWE Productions
Publisher: The Adventure Company
Platform: Wii (also PC)
Released: February 8, 2008
Test Freaks’ Freak Score: 6.0/10Eight strangers are invited to a remote island guesthouse by a Mr. Owen. Dropped off by boatman Narracott, they expect to meet Owen, but find only a recently hired husband and wife team of domestic help. The mystery deepens once the guests realize no one has ever met Owen and turns deadly once their host informs them (via recording) that each of them stands accused of a grave crime. Their lives are now linked to a children’s poem describing Ten Little Sailor Boys who are killed off one by one.
This point-and-click adventure game elevates the boatman from the oft-retitled Agatha Christie thriller and makes him the main character. A bit of invented backstory finds Patrick Narracott filling in for his brother Fred, who needs to avoid one of the guests. The subterfuge backfires, stranding Patrick with the others and — as the odd man out — he’s either the perfect person to investigate the mystery of Shipwreck Island or the prime suspect in a growing series of deaths.
As an adaptation, And Then There Were None strikes a balance between preserving the integrity of the original story and muddling it enough to keep Christie fans on their toes. The classic characters are all here, be they judgmental spinster, befuddled general, or alcoholic doctor, while new elements like eve of war intrigue and the house’s history keep things fresh. Unfortunately this attention to narrative can’t overcome poor puzzle design, primitive graphics and frustrating controls, resulting in a subpar adventure.
Easily 75% of the game involves talking to everyone about everything. Whole chapters fly by simply by finding all the characters and clicking on them until they stop talking. This would be fine if the game was dialogue-driven, but progress is only triggered once you’ve exhausted all conversation options. The end result is that you feel like you’re just making small talk while waiting for something to happen. The other 25% of the game is puzzle-based, most of which are designed to make you as annoyed as possible.
I accept that I’m playing a 2008-Wii port of a 2005 PC game, but the puzzles feel like throwbacks to mid-1990s adventuring. You’re the stereotypical adventurer wandering around stealing as much as you can, crafting Rube Goldberg devices and rubbing random objects against each other to see what happens. At one point I had over fifty items in my inventory including a wheel of cheese, a ladder, a raft and a shovel!
So let’s take the turkey baster I have and fill it with flour. Okay, now I have a DIY fingerprinting kit straight from CSI: Culinary School. With this in hand, I’ll enter people’s rooms and dump flour on their stuff looking for prints.
*sigh*
The problem isn’t that this works, it’s that it works and I can’t do anything with the clues. I’ve found some compelling — nay — incriminating prints, but I can’t use them to affect the story. As it turns out, I don’t need to do this at all. This, like so many of the puzzles, is just extraneous padding. At best solving them might squeeze an extra line of dialogue out of a character, but it won’t prevent any murders.
There’s a central confusion surrounding the main character. Are you trying to help your brother, escape the island or stop the unknown Mr. Owen from striking again? This unclear motivation results in a passive experience with Narracott clinging tightly to the story’s rails.
I mentioned the age of the game earlier, but even by 2005 standards the character models are appalling. Hands and clothing show no attention to detail and there’s no effort to lip-synch the dialogue –glaring in a game with so much conversation. And it’s a shame too, because voice acting is rather strong. Philip Clark voicing Judge Wargrave and Carolyn Seymour as Emily Brent particularly stand out.
Where graphics improve is in the house’s décor and surrounding environs. The house has a Frank Lloyd Wright aesthetic and each of its many rooms is distinct. Outside the house the island is ominous, with waves crashing against craggy rocks and grey clouds hovering just overhead. Completing the grim mood are strong ambient sounds which add texture to largely static screens and a haunting melody playing in the background.
What have been changed since the original PC release are the controls. Most of the time, you’re simply moving a cursor around the screen trying to find something to click on. The cursor is context sensitive so you won’t have to switch between PICK UP or LOOK AT prompts. In the inventory menu, Patrick can combine or separate items as needed and he also has a separate collection of notes, books and other clues he’s collected.
However the game takes a huge misstep by implementing motion controls. You don’t just click on a door; you click and twist to open it. And that’s the easiest motion control to figure out – the game thinks it’s fun to make you guess how you should flail about. As someone who has trouble with combination locks in the real world, have to unlock one via wiimote was just painful. Only one motion control gesture came naturally. It helped that I was already doing it mentally.