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The good continues, the evil begins...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: October 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The 3rd episode, long awaited Evil Under the Sun is here.

Graphics? Good as you are used of TAC. Close-ups of the characters are not the best - but it is a minor flaw only.

Sound ? The best of the three games. I very much liked the door and ambient effects, and the fact that, almost on each act, the background music changes.

Dialogs? Very good. Emphasizing Poirot's humor. Poor Hastings can almost never put his own little gray cells to work! The voices are also loud and very clear.

Plot? Interesting. Everyone who has read the book will agree that the plot in the game does not resemble the book with accuracy. Although this might be considered a flaw, I am satisfied - because you will encounter things that were not in the book.

And a nice gift, a very innovative hint system with a moving finger (say, is the Moving Finger the next TAC Agatha Christie game ?).

Advantages:

- Nice gfx, sound, and control system (unlimited (as far as I could see) saves).
- Good plot, no flaws.
- Lots of humor.
- Includes text for the dialogs. (Very important for me).
- Nice and logic , inventory-based riddles. Oh yes, and 1 rather easy puzzle-type riddle found in Linda Marshall's room.
- Full install, play without CDs.

Disadvantages:

- A bit short
- A bit easy
- A bit non-evil ; Good as a game - but no match for the book as far as the atmosphere is considered.
- Some bugs in the graphics ; Not critical, but annoying. Save F2 and Load F3 will do a needed job.
- No book included - Why ? Previous 2 games included the book in the box :(
- No alternative ending. The murderer is the same as in the book - what differs is the method of their 'arrest'. The 'And then there were none' was the only one of the three that had actually changed the plot to introduce a new finale.

Overall:
Although the game is very good overall,it is inevitably compared with the book masterpiece, and it most probably fails in the comparison. I congratulate the TAC developer's efforts, but I would suggest they spend their programming hours and talends in designing new games and not copies of the Great Lady's books, because a copy of a masterpiece is bound to be an eventual failure.

GREAT game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: October 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've loved all of the Agatha Christie games. They're well thought out and a true mystery game. Of course, being based off of the books does help! One reason I really love these games is because you get to meet different characters and investigate, interrogate, etc. It's not full of puzzles you HAVE to complete in order to continue on with the game. It doesn't have action sequences where you're worrying about your character being killed and having to go back and try again. The main characteristics are learning the suspects, finding the clues and coming to the conclusion of the murder.

It also has 7 different Acts, so the game lasts a good amount of time. I highly recommend this game for any adventure game lover and murder mystery fan!

Could Have Been WAY Better...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game had the potential to be great. But because of a very wacky and very annoying glitch, the game got old very quickly. I have read a few reviews where others have had a "white screen effect" in which the screen goes completely white, making the player unable to see anything on the screen. This has happened to me. The only way to (temporarily) fix the "white screen effect" is to save your game into a slot and then re-load it. This works for about...um...two seconds. You must keeping doing it. If, that is, you intend on actually completing the game, which I do because I paid 30 bucks for it. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the computer's fault. It is a bug. Something the company should be taking responsibility for. I wouldn't recommend this game only because there's about a 50/50 chance of it working or not.

I wished it worked

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: November 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got this game at Target the other day, and started to play it when I got home. I thought it was really fun until the screen turned all white and I couldn't play anymore. I took it back to Target and got another one. Same thing happened. I took it to a relative's house and tried it on her computer. Same thing. I took that one back and went to another store and tried it again. Same thing happened. Finally emailed the company and they said it was my computer, which doesn't make sense because I tried it on two different computers (both XP). If anyone has had this problem and has a solution, please tell me.

Christie fans will enjoy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: November 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the second AC game I've played in the series. I thought overall, it was more enjoyable than Murder on the Orient Express. What I liked about EUTS is that you don't seem to spend as much time doing silly things that don't relate to the story (although you still have to do some.) Another helpful feature is that you have a list of tasks to complete during the scene; i.e. "Read article about Miss Porter's School" and "Help Linda build a blind for birds." I felt like with MOTOE you could wander around helplessly lost for hours. As with the other AC games, you still collect items and use combinations of them to help you on your way--but what's great about EUTS is that you can tell if something is a combination by just hovering over the second tool, you don't have to click on each combo and hear the annoying "I don't think that's a good idea" speech 20 times.

The graphics are beautiful, and the voices aren't bad (although Christine Redfern is a bit annoying and I miss David Suchet as Poirot.) On the flip side, unless you save your current game frequently, you might have to repeat your moves because there are quite a few system crashes that you'll experience.

Overall, I think if you are a fan of AC and Poirot, you will enjoy the game despite the glitches. The games seem to be as addicting as the books are to read; I just hope we don't have to wait a year inbetween releases!

littledutchgirl

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: November 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Like others that bought this game I am encountering a white screen after playing for a few minutes. I am very disappointed because I have enjoyed the other two games in the series. I wrote to the company about this problem and have received no reply. I will not be buying from this company again unless they develop a patch that fixes this problem.

Wicked, not Evil

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Evil under the sun

Having played the previous two games in this series by the Adventure Company, I looked forward my third instalment of murder mystery.

They did not let me down, but first I had a problem with the graphics. It turned out that the game spec requires DirectX 9 & 64 Mb graphic memory. This is the exact same spec required for the second instalment which played fine on my computer. It seems the previous game didn't really require this but this game does. So I bought a graphics card, an FX5200, which is the lowest spec (and cheapest - roughly the cost of one game) card which has DirectX 9 and 64 or more Mb graphic memory and is an AGP card. I got 256 Mb but there are 64Mb cards and 128 Mb versions which would enable playing of this game. The symptom of the problem is a loss of background image leaving a white screen [blizzard conditions!] which makes the game unplayable. Exchanging the card is easy and should take no more than a few minutes. For the record, my old card was an Nvidea MX/MX400 which supports DirectX 7 and has 32 Mb graphic memory. If your computer has PCI then there are many more cards to choose from.

Once the technical aspects were settled, I played the game.

The story is a complicated one. It is more involved than the previous games in the series. I'd not read the book, so this was new to me. You play as Hastings, Poirot's friend, following in his footsteps. This is a novel device to have Poirot knowing all the outcomes and thus able to advise the player. The avatar on screen has Poirot's body and voice. This gave the developers opportunity to inject some humour which I much appreciated. The game is in chapters, seven in all. The end of each chapter is marked by the player being whisked to Poirot's office and some advice given by him. An innovation is "the finger of suspicion" which serves as a hint system as well as an extra puzzle. Initially I was wary of this but soon came to value its efficiency particularly at the end of chapters where there is usually one last action to trigger the chapter end, but nothing suggests itself. Much time was saved by consulting "the finger of suspicion".

The graphics are good, the acting fine. In the final chapter Poirot outlines his case, with prompts from the player. I had my suspicions, but didn't work out who the murder was.

I enjoyed the game. The scenario was memorable. Puzzles are perhaps on the easy side, but the game is none the worse for that. This is definitely a 20 hours plus game, unless you make repeated use of the hint system.

This is the best of the three games in the series. I recommend it. Just make sure your graphics set up is capable.

A patch that works

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I previously gave this game low marks for the whiteout issue . . . I truly don't feel the general game specifications on the box precluded using the game on a computer with an integrated graphics chipset. Anyway, I recently downloaded the patch from the manufacturer's website (beware: they don't exactly identify what the patch is supposed to fix), and I'm happy to say I never had another whiteout, even with my "basic" computer. It's a good game, too. I do feel that Poirot spends a little too much time walking (it would be so much better if you could click on an island map to get him to a different location), but, overall, they capture the feeling of the book, gave the gamer some good puzzles to solve, and offered up some lovely visuals and music. Lots of fun and I'll play it again. Sorry I'm unable to upgrade the amount of stars for this review!

read all reviews before purchase

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: November 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I knew something was drastically wrong when I found the master key for the hotel rooms before I finished Act 3. It was dangling from the hallway ceiling near Linda's Room. After that, I uninstalled the game and called it quits.

I wish that I could have played this game for more than 7 minutes without my computer rebooting with an error message. A white screen would have been welcome.

Contrary to other reviewers, having an excellent driver or an excellent graphics card did nothing to help me.

I am very disappointed. I own both of the earlier games for PC (Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None) and never experienced a problem this severe with either of them.

Caveat Emptor!!!

Additional note. I gave this game to a friend at work. She took Mr.Anderson's advice and downloaded the "patch" for the game and was so pleased with the patch's ability to stave off the white screen and reboots that the game is currently in a landfill somewhere in PA.

evil under the sun pc game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: November 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Can't review game because my computer graphics aren't strong enough to play the game, which looked like it would have been fun.

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