Game review: Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders - Nintendo DS

Playing the game I soon discovered I had very little influence over the investigation, whether it was interrogating suspects, finding clues or ultimately revealing the killer.

Instead it was like working my way through a book – but before I could turn the pages I had to solve a series of often complex and random challenges which had little to do with the actual murder story.

This isn’t to say The ABC Murders is a bad game. It has a good plot and is quite good fun in places - just be aware that it doesn’t offer much scope for proper detective work.

Wannabe sleuths looking for a genuine whodunit might want to look elsewhere, but if you want a game which taxes your brain, and you’re a fan of Agatha Christie books, this is still worth checking out.

The ABC Murders is based on the Christie book, set in the 1930s with a serial killer bumping off victims in alphabetical order.

The game follows Belgian crime-buster Hercule Poirot and posh English gent Captain Hastings as they attempt to crack the case.

There are two choices for how to play. In classic story the plot follows the book whereas in free mystery the story is rewritten to include a different murderer and amended evidence.

In both modes the game plays out in the same way in that Poirot and Hastings travel around various locations related to the killings, examining scenes and questioning witnesses or suspects.

Examining simply involves using the stylus to drag a magnifying glass around the screen. With one exception all you tend to find are fairly useless clues or odd facts about the author and her work. Most of the evidence is provided by police officers instead of you discovering it for yourself.

Questioning people is also a simple process. You’re given a small selection of pre-determined questions and you click on each one to ask it. The person gives their response and you move on to the next question.

Deciding which questions to ask creates an illusion of choice. In reality the options are very limited and you will end up asking all the available questions anyway and travelling to all the available locations. There is very little room to sway the case in a particular direction.

This feeling of almost being outside the investigation carries on throughout the game.

Hastings keeps a journal during the case but he is very selective about what he puts in it. Nearing the climax of the case he begins to focus his notes on one particular character, which is hard to ignore. I’d rather the game allowed players to jot down their own thoughts to make it more like solving the case than simply watching it.

The mental challenge in the game comes not from deciphering the clues and choosing who the madman is, but from correctly answering the frequent maths questions, logic puzzles and word teasers the game throws at you. Each one must be answered as it is posed before you can progress.

The questions are quite entertaining to solve but they soon become annoying for mostly being totally irrelevant to the murder case.

Some of them have a tenuous link to the investigation, such as working out the date of the next killing from a sequence of numbers or picking the quickest route to the murder scene from a selection of travel times and speeds. There is also deducing the exact time of a murder by analysing the movements of several witnesses.

Very few of the challenges take the case forward. For example, how does unravelling an anagram of something found at a scene actually help?

More frustratingly, most of the riddles and calculations are completely abstract.

As you progress through the game the challenges cover such pointless things as how much of a pie four brothers should receive, finishing positions of horses in a race and how many notes of certain denominations you would need to achieve a particular money total.

There is nothing wrong with being tested and there is nothing wrong with brain teasing games in general, but there are better examples of the format on the DS. What the DS doesn’t have many of is good detective games, and this one seems to miss an opportunity to deliver a truly engaging and suspenseful murder mystery.

The game isn’t helped by lacklustre presentation.

Graphics are very basic. They are mostly just static pictures, with the story unfolding through text narration.

There is very little sound in the game other than slightly annoying plinky-plunky music, as is often the DS’s way.

Even though there are deaths aplenty in The ABC Murders, the game still needs more life.

Its presentation provides very little personality or atmosphere. You never really feel any great tension during the investigation, and even at the biggest moment of suspense when you accuse the murderer it still all feels a little flat.

Overall, The ABC Murders is an OK game but too many tell-tale signs of mediocrity have been left at the scene for it to be considered the perfect crime game.

Verdict: 5 out of 10 – Too much tedious puzzle solving, not enough detective work. A case of unfulfilled potential considering the classic fiction source material.