Still Life little review

Still Life is a point and click adventure which was released last week on
Xbox and PC. I am playing the xbox version.

Adventure games do not come around often so I had to try this one.

It is Christmas in Chicago. You are an FBI agent investigating some serial
killings. You start the game at a crime scene and have to gather evidence
using the tools given to you and also take pictures at the crime scene. No
real puzzles in the first section as it really is just gathering evidence.
After a few scenes elsewhere you end up at your fathers house for christmas
and find out your grandfather was working on a very similar case back in the
1920's. This is where the scene changes and you are now controlling the
grandfather in Prague in the 20's trying to solve his case. This is where I
am up to in the game.

The graphics are really nicely detailed in typical Syberia style (made by
the same people who made Syberia games). But while the locations are nicely
detailed, the characters are pretty average looking. But this does not
detract from it looking good.

Onto the dialogue. This is where it is a little unusual. You do not get any
dialogue options or choice of questions. Your choice is only whether you
wish to ask a work related question or a personal question (choice is made
by left or right trigger). If you choose left trigger say for work related
question, the character will ask set questions and the other will respond.
You have no choice in what is asked in a given conversation. Whilst this may
seem very limited in your options, it does give you the feeling more that
the developers wanted you to see a set story in a certain way - it plays
well like watching a movie. I think it works much better than having a list
of questions to choose from and having to go through alot of rubbish until
you find the answer you want - it gets straight to the important stuff.
The voice acting is pretty average as is the background music.
The puzzles are your typical adventure puzzles - some are pretty obscure and
some are easy. I imagine some of you if you play it will resort to a
walkthrough to get help as most adventures are quite hard.

Controls are easy and the interface uses the typical hand icns, etc for
movable/usable objects. it is not totally point and click though, its not
of the type "move cursor to this point and character will walk there" - you
are free to walk your character around as in any normal action/adventure
game using the left thumbstick, so there is more freedom than having to just
point your character to the right direction. When you walk to an area or
point of interest, the character may look in that direction and an object
icon will appear.

I have to mention the loading and saving. There are quite a few load
screens when the character moves from one room or area to another, but it is
really important to note that these load screens are extremely short. They
only last one or two seconds at most, you barely notice them - unless moving
to a totally new area which requires a total change of graphics then its
slightly longer, maybe 3-4 seconds. Also saving is extremely quick - only
about one second to save the game.
This game is xbox live aware and you can see your friends list - appear
online or offline is toggled simply by the press of the black button in the
menu screen.

All in all its quite a good game. If you do not like adventure games then
naturally you will find it boring, but to adventure fans it is definitely a
must-play game and I would give it overall, so far an 8/10 having played
about 2 hours in. bear in mind though that it is only about 2 hours and my
opinions may change later.

Beck wrote:
> Still Life is a point and click adventure which was released last
> week on Xbox and PC. I am playing the xbox version.
>
> Adventure games do not come around often so I had to try this one.

I have to add to what I have already put that some of the cut scenes are
excellent and very gripping. I had to remind myself to actually breathe a
few times as I was concentrating so much on what was going on.