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Pretty Darn Good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 64 / 67
Date: June 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Victoria MacPherson is a young FBI agent with a reputation for ignoring procedure. She's investigating a series of brutal murders in Chicago when, home for the holidays, she has a peek into her Grandfather Gus's trunk. Grandpa was a PI in the 20's and it seems that one of his last cases bears an eerie similarity to the one Victoria is investigating now. Can Gus's old case files help Vic figure out what's going on?

I really, really liked Still Life, but there are some things you should know going into it. First off, it's not really a whodunnit, solve the crime and catch the killer kind of story. It has a mystery theme, but it's more about how a series of crimes has reached through time to haunt the family MacPherson than it is about Law and Order. And that is really, really well done. The parallels between the Gus case and the Victoria case are not so obvious as to be ludicrous but still meaningful. And the story is both moving and frightening, with lots of "Oh No!" moments.

Second of all, Still Life is a little atypical in its set-up. There are certain adventure game conventions that are just ignored and whether you find this annoying or kind of a relief will depend on you. The conversation trees are a case in point. Many games go out of the way to give the impression that conversing with other characters is interactive by allowing you to choose from a long list of discussion topics, even knowing that most gamers will exhaust every single topic before exiting the conversation. In Still Life, the pretense that you have some choice in this matter is dispensed with. You just keep clicking until you're done. You're not given any choice of topic or any way of choosing what order the conversation happens in. I thought this was fine. Some people really didn't like it.

Still LIfe is fairly linear. There are aspects of it that are more like an interactive movie than a gamey-game. Many of the tasks you'll accomplish don't really have much of an affect on the outcome; they merely allow you to proceed to the next part of the story. There was only one place where I had no idea what to do next; most of the time your character stated her (or his; you play as both Gus and Victoria) intention up front. The in-game menus offers both a conversation log and character journals for more information, as well. Puzzles are inventory-based mechanical and your inventory offered a "view" option for each item, wherein you could manipulate it in 3-D to collect more clues (I like this kind of thing a lot). There were only 3 puzzles of particular frustration. One where you had to randomly guess which ingredients in a recipe were which would have been greatly improved by SOME kind of clue or identifiable system. Another involved picking a lock that didn't actually seem to function in the way it was described. The third, in which you must guide a robot through a room full of deadly lasers, actually was the easiest of the three for me in that I actually had a clue what to do and accomplished it with some practice. I mention it here because many have considered it Still Life's low point. Other than this latter (where timing is important), there are no timed puzzles and you can't die.

One frustrating thing is that you have to follow a pretty strict system for using the inventory. When you encounter a hotspot, even if you have the item you need with you you can't really use it until you have clicked on the hotspot without it. Sometimes you can't collect the item you need until you've clicked on the hotspot and been informed that you need it. However, it was quite clear where everything was and easy to locate things in advance, so when you knew you needed them you could go right there instead of searching randomly.

Still Life is gorgeous to look at--the prerendered backgrounds are some of the best I've seen. Character movement was still a little stiff and stilted, however. Many scenes are gruesome and gory; we're talking serial murders here. I thought the voice acting was pretty good. Some people have complained about ethnic stereotypes. I grew up in the inner city, so I didn't notice anything strange. There is some salty language.

The ending is a cliffhanger. Still Life was planned as the second in a trilogy of games (The first, Post Mortem is still available and worth playing, although you don't need to play it to understand and enjoy this one). However, the third game may take a while to appear, if it ever does, because of Ubisoft's buy-out of Microids. So if you want your game to be all wrapped up neatly at the end, you may be disappointed.

I played Still Life in about 20 hours and wished it was longer. It reminded me a lot of both The Longest Journey and Syberia, though with a kind of X-Files twist. This is surely one of the best new games I've played recently.

Interesting, Creepy, and Artistic

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 52 / 54
Date: April 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Still Life has met my expectations, but not exceeded them. It's very reminiscent of the Syberia games in terms of the great cinematics (which I believe were even better in this game), story development, and puzzle style. It also had some really great voice talents, writing, and music. I was genuinely frightened during a few parts of the game, biting my nails in anticipation.
I have not played "Post Mortem", which is somewhat of a prequel to this game. That ended up being perfectly fine, because you actually get to play as the character from that game, who is the grandfather of our modern day character, Victoria. Victoria McPherson is an intelligent and motivated character that I liked listening to and controlling very much.
There were only two times when I became overly frustrated with this game, but they were trivial anyway...Victoria some times gets stuck walking in place behind objects, but you can just re-click to your destination and its all good. Also, every time you enter the elevator you have to watch a very annoying 3 second elevator scene. Be prepared for a few minutes of wasted time!
I highly recommend purchasing this game if you are a fan of the third-person adventure game and also if you enjoy horror stories and involved storylines. Still Life is definitely a "mature" game, so consider that if you are wary of the product rating. Oh, and it worked perfect on Windows XP!

The good, the bad, and the pretty

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: June 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"Still Life" has some good elements, some bad elements, and some very pretty artwork!

The Good:

The game has a great story, a must for any mystery/adventure game, and some good dialogue. You will find yourself intrigued by the story, as other reviewers have noted, impressed by the scenic designs (more below), and interested in the characters.

The game was not buggy. I had no trouble with anything I tried to do, and no patches needed to be downloaded or anything.

For me, those things go a long way. But...

The Bad:

The acting was terrible, especially for the African-American characters. They obviously had white Canadians doing all the voices. There was no attempt at an accent for the Czech characters. The American characters sound like Canadians. And the African-American characters sound like some white guys trying to sound like Chris Rock.

As another reviewer mentioned, lots of time is wasted due to the absolute linearity of the events. For example: suppose you are in a room, and you happen to notice a bulge in the wall. You want to investigate the wall, but you realize you'll need to a tool to cut into it. So you remeber a toolbox in another building and think, "I'll bet I need something out of that toolbox."

So you have to do all the walking to get out of the building and into your car. Then click on the map, arrive at the other building, walk inside, walk to where the toolbox is. That takes about three minutes and is very monotonous. You click on the toolbox, only to hear the character say, "I don't need anything in there."

So you backtrack all the way to the building with the bulge in the wall. When you get there, you click on the bulge in the wall. The character says, "I'll need a tool to get at that."

Guess what? Now you have to repeat everything you just did, only this time, it will let you take a tool from the toolbox. This is silly and a waste of time.

I was also horribly disappointed at the ending! I don't want to spoil it, but it was just a big let down.

The pretty:

The art was the best thing about this game. Sets and character models, to the scenery and props, to the oil paintings which are a main part of the story, these guys did an awesome job on the art. First class!
----------------------

The style of the game is much like "Sanitarium," "The Black Mirror," etc., but the execution was much better. If you liked those games, you will find "Still Life" interesting enough. All in all, it was not a bad game, but it did let me down from what I expected.

Great adventure game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 19
Date: May 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Finally...a good one. After despairing at the absolutely awful quality of Legacy: Dark Shadows (has there ever been such a poorly-acted, poorly scripted, utterly unprofessional piece of product) and the equally dreadful Moment of Silence (misleadingly, Just Adventure and a few other sites gave MoS a good review), Still Life has restored my confidence. This is a hugely atmospheric, hugely enjoyable, logical and absorbing adventure game for grownups. Proper dialogue, actual actors (whoever played the completely charmless 'Ren' in Dark Shadows sounded like a doped-up lobotomy patient). I thought I was going to have to wait for Longest Journey 2 to have this much fun. This is highly recommended. I'm having to deliberately prevent myself from playing too much, as I want to stretch out the experience.

Finally!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: May 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Yes, I may be an elitist, but I can't help but miss the heyday of adventure gaming when Guybrush Threepwood was a household name and Lucasarts actually produced video games that were not connected to Star Wars in some way or another (great games they were too). But within the last decade the production of adventure games has noticeably dwindled and even the games that were released weren't even worth the bother. The designers began focusing more on the beautifully rendered backdrops than the actual gameplay, and the Adventure genre suffered greatly as a result. Needless to say, the adventure was taken out of adventure gaming.

Then came Still Life.

This is an amazing game. You can just buy the game (or not) based solely on that comment, or if you're a stickler for details you can read further.

THE STORY: Still Life is actually a sequel to Post Mortem. The game takes place approximately 80 years after Gus MacPherson's adventures in Paris and introduces his granddaughter Victoria. You alternate between playing Gus, a private investigator who is investigating a series of prostitute killings in late 1920's Prague and Victoria, an FBI agent who is on the hunt for a serial killer in modern day Chicago. If you haven't played Post Mortem don't fret, it doesn't hinder the gameplay one bit.

THE GAMEPLAY: Still Life is pretty gruesome and I would not recommend it for children or the squemish. It contains nudity, profanity, and scenes of bloodshed (you are investigating a serial killer after all, what were you expecting, fluffy bunnies?). The backdrops are beautifully rendered and when paired with the soundtrack a eerie ambience is well-achieved. I found myself on the edge of my seat at times just waiting for something to happen or dreading going forward ("But I don't WANT to go into the creepy burned down neighborhood *sniffle*") But then again, that is half the fun of the game.

The voice acting, save one or two characters, is top of the line. The dialogues are not overbearing and there is the option to skip over tedious dialogue that is not necessary to continue gameplay. Everytime you speak to somebody a little mouse icon is shown on the screen, if you left-click you discuss things pertinent to the game, right-click is reserved for idle chit-chat. Eventhough I always exhaust all the dialogues, I loved having this option in the game. Still Life also has the option for subtitles and you can move the dialogue along faster by hitting the space bar. The only problem I had with the dialogues is all the profanity, but only because at times it seemed almost forced.

The puzzles in Still Life are alot of fun and they are logical. It seems that lately adventure games have been more focused on weird abstract puzzles that really have no clues to solve them contained within the game. The puzzles in Still Life are challenging, but not to the point of insanity and I didn't have any breakdowns where I had to resort to a walkthrough before I killed my computer. Thankfully there are no timed puzzles in Still Life and there is only the rare instance when you have to resort to a saved game in order to get yourself out of a bind (I had to once). My only problem with the gameplay is that sometimes the characters tell you what to do next. Eventhough it was usually pretty obvious what needed to be done next, I thought it would have been better for the developers to allow you to figure it out for yourself.

In conclusion, this game should not be missed if you are a fan of adventure games. With its gripping story, beautiful graphics AND enjoyable gameplay, Still Life might be what the market needs to resurrect adventure gaming.

Be Careful! StarForce protection installs on your system!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: June 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Still Life has a StarForce copy protection scheme which completely spoiled the experience for me. It installs in a separate folder from the game, and caused havoc with my very ordinary system. Five different programs (games and demos) would not run and load. Realizing what the cause might be, I quickly played through the game using a walkthrough, found it to be a "B" level title, and uninstalled it. StarForce needs a separate unistallation or it stays on your system and continues to cause problems.
The game is simply not worth that kind of hassle!

Good story, nice graphics, horrible puzzles

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Still Life is a game that has great potential, but is ultimately somewhat lacking because of two fundamental flaws: 1) Some of the puzzles can be solved only through trial-and-error, and 2) The player doesn't get to participate in solving the murders!

The primary upside of the game is its eye-candy. The pre-rendered settings are excellent. There is a very "Nocturne" feel to the settings, especially in Prague. The cutscenes are very well done as well. There is some nudity and some graphic violence, but it really isn't overbearing and is less graphic than games like "Tender Loving Care" or "Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh".

The music and sound are excellent and really help set the mood. I will grant that in terms of atmosphere, the designers did a great job. There are times when the game is downright creepy.

The real problems involve the actual gameplay. There are times when your character has all the tools he or she needs to accomplish the task, but it isn't obvious how to do what needs to be done. For example, at one point you are asked to lift fingerprints from a beer bottle. You have the bottle, a brush, powder, and tape for lifting the prints. Even knowing what you have and the order of the steps you need to take doesn't mean that you will easily be able to lift prints.

Worse still are a few of the puzzles. There are two puzzles in particular that are not solvable except by trial and error. One is a cookie recipe. If you use every possible clue given by the game designers, there are 48 possible combinations to determine the right recipe. (If you don't use the clues, and they are subtle, there are 5000 possibilities!) The only way to try a recipe is to combine all the ingredients and see if you're right. There are eight ingredients, and each takes three clicks to use. That's 48x8x3=1152 mouse clicks to solve the puzzle using trial and error!

There is a second puzzle very near the end of the game in which you are asked to select three words from a list of eight to enter into a virtual "search engine". If you make the assumption that you know one of the words there are still 42 combinations to try. What fun!

Most frustrating of all, however, is the feeling that you are being asked to solve random puzzles (like a cookie recipe) but not being asked to solve the murder! The story is completely linear. You cannot complete any tasks out of order. When you talk to any character in the game, you have no dialogue choices. You click on the person you want to talk to and a conversation ensues. If there is more of the conversation, you click on the person again. You can't do anything else until you finish the conversation, and you can't change anything, but you have to click them. It's like watching television but having to prompt the actors onscreen to talk.

This linearity and lack of dialogue choices makes you feel like you are watching "Law and Order" rather than trying to solve a mystery. If you are looking for a "whodunit" you will be sorely disappointed. This is doubly true because the murders cannot be solved! It would be too big a spoiler to explain this statement, but it is true.

Overall, it's an atmospheric game with a decent story (except for an ending many players on the Still Life website were unhappy with). The gameplay is not very good and some of the puzzles make you head straight for the walkthrough. If you can pick it up for less than $20.00 it might be a fun diversion, but it's definitely not worth more than that.

Fun but dissatisfying ending

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: January 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Still Life starts out seeming like a crime scene investigation game. You show up at the scene of a serial killer's latest murder, and you have to collect various evidence. I assumed that this would lead to more of a mystery-solving game where you had to analyze the information you found in order to determine the killer, but that was not the case. Instead, this is more of a traditional point-and-click third person adventure. It consists mainly of picking up inventory items and using them to interact with the environment, and solving various puzzles, mainly graphical puzzles, although a couple are verbal. Though unexpected, most of the game was fun and most of the puzzles were easy to solve. There were a few exceptions where I got frustrated and had to look up hints because I wanted to move on with the plot. The puzzle at the very end which requires significant manual dexterity to quickly move out of the way of deadly lasers was particularly frustrating. I am more of a thinker rather than a quick mouse-clicker and I found this puzzle to be out of place in a mostly thinking type game. I had to get someone else to do it for me so I could see the ending.

You play two different characters which switch off in each of the 7 chapters. In odd numbered chapters you are Victoria McPherson, an FBI agent with a curious propensity for going around in the Chicago winter wearing a tight miniskirt. In even numbered chapters you play Gus McPherson, Victoria's grandfather. Both characters are solving similar serial murder cases, in modern Chicago and 1920s Prague, respectively. Within the context of the story, Victoria is reading her grandfather's journals and re-experiencing the case.

The game is very linear. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. It's good because there were never points where you just couldn't figure out what to do next. It's bad because it won't even let you pick up items before it's time to use them. I'd rather just keep all pertinent items in my inventory and figure out myself when it's time to use them, rather than having to run back to places to see which old items are now useable.

Some advantages of the game was an interesting and engaging plot, good graphics, and puzzles that are largely enjoyable and reasonable to figure out.

Some things that annoyed me were the puzzles were not always clearly integrated into the plotline. I knew I had to solve the puzzle because it was the only thing to do but I did not know why. Sometimes I figured out later, other times I didn't figure it out at all, like the puzzle in which you have to bake cookies. Also, the characters are supposed to be American but the actors are Canadian and did a poor job of imitating American speech.

The largest detriment to this game is the ending. In any murder mystery, you expect to solve the mystery by the end. However, the ending leaves us with as little clue as to who the killer is as the beginning. Quite simply, the credits roll, and you are left screaming at the computer. I have heard this is to leave the door open for a sequel, but as the company was bought out by another, who knows when or if that sequel will be made. For $30, the game should have been longer to allow for a satisfactory resolution.

A gritty experience but you need to be an expert mouse manipulator

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: October 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"Still Life" is one of those games in which you become immersed and wonder where you are when you log off. Jack-knifing back and forth from present day Chicago to Prague in the 1920's, the story involves the sleuthing 0f Gus MPherson in Prague and Victoria, Gus's granddaughter, as an FBI Agent in Chicago. Both investigators are after a particularly nasty serial killer.To cut to the chase, let me spell out the way I feel about "Still Life."

PROS: an interesting story, the characters well-defined and both the cut scenes and the environment are as good as it gets. The opening scene in a ghastly abandoned Chicago apartment practically gets you scratching. As Officer Tate says, he needs a tetanus shot just looking at it. The snowy but cold and bleak scenes of Chicago contrast sharply with the Christmas lights blinking everywhere. The lights do not provide comfort. The killer is afoot and lurking and the game programmers make certain you don't start feeling cosy. They keep you edgy- and cold.

CONS: I would award "Still Life" 5 stars if they had sharpened up their dialog and had not included, at the very end, a puzzle requiring advanced mouse or keyboard manipulation. Although the voice acting is, in general, good, the words they say are often ridiculous. You have Victoria, the FBI Agent, talking like a guttersnipe, and many of the prostitutes in Prague sounding like they just graduated from finishing school. The verbal interchange between Victoria and her father is stilted and awkward. Best voice acting in my opinion: Gus, Victoria, the "crowman," Mark, Mia, and the Red Lantern bouncer.

At the end of "Still Life" after you've gallantly come through the adventure unscathed, you are confronted with a diabolically difficult puzzle involving avoiding laser beams as you (Victoria) manipulate a robot. Success here is totally dependent on your being able to bipass the laser beams with your mouse or keyboard.

Although I had excellent walkthroughs telling me exactly what to do, I could not avoid the lasers and could not therefore finish the game. I was obliged to get a "save" from Quandary@quandaryland.com (att'n Rosemary).Quandary's experts had succeeded in getting the robot home and had saved the game after the laser caper. All you have to do is add the saved game you'll receive to your Still Life saves file.
http://www.quandaryland.com is Quandary's excellent website.

Putting in a puzzle depending solely on the abilty of being an advanced mouse or keyboard manipulator is the pits and not appropriate to an adventure game.

Mediocre Game Playing Experience

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: September 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I give this game a 5 for creepiness, but a 2 for overall game play experience. It's great to play in a dark room with a few candles lit, while drinking a cup of coffee (for atmosphere and stuff). I've been playing adventure games for quite awhile (way back when Sierra was making them) so I've developed a set of standards on what I think makes a good game.

Still Life is your typical Mystery Thriller, 3rd Person, Point & Click, with Puzzles thrown in. These are my favorite types of games.

The Graphics/Ambience are very good and detailed. This isn't one you want to let the kids play though. The game shows hacked-up, nude dead bodies and there are also a few F words thrown in (for that gritty cop feel).

About the puzzles: If it takes me more than 15 minutes to figure out how to solve a puzzle and then solve it, I get bored and annoyed with the game. For example, the cookie recipe. After working on this one for awhile, I wasn't using my puzzle-solving skills as much as just switching ingredients around until something fit. That's not fun or challenging, it's just annoying. The lock-picking puzzle might be a fun challenge for a Mensa genius, but I hated that puzzle. I actually never made it through the entire game because I got to the laser-robot puzzle and after trying like 50 times, gave up, and uninstalled the game. Then I went online to read a spoiler about how it ended (and read that it sucked).

The inventory puzzles and trying to figure out what to do next were pretty easy. You get clues from characters on where to go next so there's no guessing, but that made the game a little TOO easy. I think the game developers did it so the player wouldn't waste time running from place to place, but still...I think those hints could have been less direct.

The game is relatively short and not really worth $30. They should have sold it for $20 based on the short game play.

A couple of minor annoyances and things I liked about it: When Victoria enters the first crime scene containing a dead body, I would think she would be a little more serious. Instead, she's cracking lame jokes all over the place. Excuse me, there's a dead chick in the bathtub, have a little respect. Otherwise, I liked the character. Gus was a little flat at first, but I got used to his style and I liked his character even better.

Overall, the game was interesting, but not that great. If you decide to buy a copy I'd wait until it goes on sale for $20 because it's really not worth the current price.

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