Full Review

2 July 2008 - Art of Murder FBI Confidential thrusts you into the murky world of Nicole Bonnet, a young and suitably sexy FBI agent working in the New York office in this point and click adventure game.

The game starts up in a fairly simple fashion, introducing you to point and click, and allowing a soft start around the office, collecting printer paper, gathering information and so on, before you set out on your investigations proper to discover who the serial killer is, and unravel surrounding mysteries.

Control is simple as it is based around mouse action and in this sense it is pretty simple to pick up and play Art of Murder. You don’t need any instructions, although hints are available to help point out things you can investigate. You can just randomly click on everything, but there is a purpose to everything and it is worth taking your time to investigate everything and absorb as much information as possible.

As is common, you have a PDA that will record a whole host of information and also acts as a phone as well as keeping a track on what you are doing by recording vital pieces of information.

The game is constructed from a number of sequential puzzles, some more complex than others, so you have to collect the information, interview people and snoop around yourself to make a breakthrough. The pace is relatively easy and it does take time to progress through the game, this isn’t the sort of game you can jump into for 30 minutes – more for a few hours.

Art of Murder is addictive, partly because of the simplicity, so you want to keep searching, because you can. That said, conversations can be wordy and you might wonder why you are listening to this twittering when you could be talking to your mother instead.

Graphically the cutscenes are reasonable, not ground-breaking, but achieve their aim, the opening scene, although a little slow, starts things nicely. In the game itself, the graphics are easily handled on most but the oldest notebooks, they are detailed enough to be interesting, but there is no real fast action to put any stress on your PC. The details are important and you can only help but chuckle at the realism of the FBI office, for example.

Set over 200 different scenes, the mystery unfolds as you investigate, taking you all over New York and off to more exotic locations and into the jungle. With all the clues before you, things are never too difficult, but you might find it frustrating at times when you don’t seem to be making any progress: Nicole's witty retorts when you do something wrong soon irritate, but she will also lay down a number of clues for you.

The storyline is interesting and has been thought out, but is riddled with clichés that sometimes make it too simplistic, however there are a number of plot twists to keep things interesting.

VERDICT
Overall Art of Murder is a simple point and click adventure which is solidly made with enough to keep you entertained. Things are never too difficult, but this is a genre that will appeal to a subset of gamers and shouldn’t be compared to the more graphically intense fast action games that dominate the gaming market.

Art of Murder is refreshing in that it doesn’t make huge demands on your PC and is enjoyable and engaging enough to warrant your attention. That said, it doesn’t particularly challenge and if you crave fast action, you’ll soon get bored.