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5 Stars for the Story!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: July 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'll begin by saying this is a mystery. I played the xbox version of the game and it is basically a click and play style game with a few puzzles thrown in the mix. For most people I'd heard it was boring because of this fact. However, the story alone kept me involved with what was basically a movie with game appeal. Still Life is the story of Victoria (an FBI agent) who is in the middle of serial case. You are taken back to her relative an ex-detective in the 1920's (you also play/see his back story) that also is investigating similar murders. I don't want to give away more story than that. It's mostly you doing the investigating finding things, asking questions (via the point and click method I mentioned) so most of the game is on the simple side to play with those puzzles thrown in that can be a real pain unless you are great at them.

All that aside the graphics, music, storyline, and acting are wonderfully done. This game was better than most multi-million dollar hollywood blockbuster out today. With a cliff hanger ending that I hated only because I want more!!! I loved this game. The fact of the gameplay easily evaporated in my mind as I sat eagerly awaiting each turn in the story.

It does have a rating of M and should because this is a very graphic game.

I highly recommend this game with the warning that the majority of the gameplay is easy. But I did break down with the puzzles and search out walk throughs online to get past points that I was stuck on and made it through the game now twice.

The music they chose is also haunting and adds to the elements of the story. I have been longing for a detective story like this and was happy to have found Still Life. So with the warnings I have given you go in with your eyes open and give it a try and enjoy. I know I did.

Budget Title

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

You get what you pay for. Its true for almost everything in this world. You buy a $10 new game, chances are there is a reason its $10 and not $50. So, when you look at a "budget title" like many from the Adventure Company, you need to understand that things aren't going to be at the same grand scale of say Halo 2 or Final Fantasy.

Before I get onto my review, a reader mentioned the game ends in a cliff hanger. Its true. There is a third game that was planned to finish off this series (the game started with Post Mortem) but now that the studio responsible for this game was bought by Ubisoft, who knows if it will come to be. Here's hoping it will!

Games like Still Life don't have many fans on the consoles. Adventure games (Still Life, Post Mortem, The Longest Journey, Sierra et al) thrive on the PC market but you rarely see these games cross over onto the Console. Myst and Monkey Island are two of the better known ones, but you'd be hard pressed to find many more above and beyond them. I think this is probably why there are some bad reviews here; most console players don't know exactly what they are getting themselves into.

I happen to like most adventure games that are logical. I couldn't get into Monkey island because I never did figure out why I was connecting the old sock, the string cheese and the hook to make a contraption to escape my situation. True, Still Life has its own share of silly riddles and puzzles (why Vodka would be the code for the morgue is beyond me) but its not to the degree others have been.

Games that are like Still Life get my mind going. A mix of Seven, CSI and adventure game, Still Life is a sequel of sorts to Post Mortem. You play as Vic MacPherson, a field agent, who is investigating a series of murdered young women. The crime eventually starts to draw parallels with an earlier string of murders commited 75 years ago. Is it a copy cat? Or is something more malicious going on?

The best thing about adventure games, for me, is that they usually are very story focused. The stories are usually very good and well thought out. Still Life is no different. It's a dark story that earns the M rating in the first few scenes. Bad languange, partial nudity, violence and gore abound, but hover around the range of, say, Seven.

Going back to my budget comment, the FMVs aren't of the best quality. In fact, some of them look worse than those on the first Playstation. But the graphics in game are stunning, really. Beautiful pre-rended backgrounds lend an air of creepiness and fit the theme. The first building, dilapidated and severely gross is a good indication of the rest of the game. The character models are lacking, though. Particularly when Vic runs. She walks okay, even though she walks like a super model, but running is both slow and clunky. There are also a ton of quick loads. The camera is presented in a cinematic way (ala Resident Evil) and sometimes moving between camera frame to camera frame there is a quick 1 second or so load. Annoying because it breaks the pacing but not detrimental.

The dialogue is hit or miss. Sometimes Vic's voice is spot on and other times its silly and sounds like a high schooler with no acting experience reading the lines. Other voices range from great to bad. I like that the game gives you an option of sticking just to the facts when talking or asking about every day things. By pressing the R or L trigger, you can discuss facts pertinent to the investigation or about the weather. I do kind of wish there were dialogue trees. It takes out the investigative nature of the game if you simply choose to pull L to continue the story.

Surprisingly, for a budget game, the game is presented in 720p which is awesome considering not many Xbox games are presented in it. It also has 5.1 surround sound in game and is Live Aware. Not bad for a 20 buck game!

All of these complaints aside, you get what you pay for. In this case, you get more. For every bad quibble I have with the game, there's something good. And, it really boils down to the game cost me $19.99 new. You can't hold it to the same standard of a game that costs almost 3 times as much. If you like murder mysteries and don't mind the format of an adventure game, you can't go wrong with Still Life. If you like adventure games and only own an Xbox, you will enjoy Still Life.

Pretty visuals, dull gameplay

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A nice looking, budget priced maiden effort from The Adventure Company, STILL LIFE is an old school "wander around environments looking for clues and talking to NPC's to solve a mystery" game that takes you all the way back to the days when such games were text-based. Still Life adds a few "CSI"-ish elements to keep everything current.

For such a small title the visuals are often stunning, with pre-rendered backgrounds to match the best examples the video game industry has ever offered. Character modeling is reasonably good, too, and the murder mystery plot isn't so bad either.

The problem? Gameplay. It's all simply way too slow moving. After a promising early scene when you actually get to wander through a very "Se7en"-ishly disgusting-looking crime scene gathering physical evidence (you even spray a wall with Luminol and use a black light to read messages written in blood a couple of times), the whole thing peters out into a s-l-o-w exercise in going from one map to another, asking NPC's questions, solving puzzles to unlock things, and collecting items. In other words, been there done that.

The game is so linear that even the scripted conversations you have with NPC's don't offer you any freedom of choice. Instead of giving you several options of how you can steer the course of a conversation (say, as in Deus Ex Invisible War and others), you are simply offered the choice between clicking the L or R triggers. The L trigger has you conduct a story-specific "nothing but the facts Ma'am" conversation, while the R allows for "off-topic" chat about the weather and things like that. But when all you're doing is clicking the triggers over and over to get to the next scripted line, instead of being allowed a choice of three or four replies your character can give, it makes me wonder why the conversations weren't just cut-scenes. No matter what order you click the triggers, there's never a change to the conversation that affects the game's ultimate outcome.

Speaking of cut-scenes, this is one of those games where all the gameplay is "move your cursor around until it passes over something in the frame and becomes an icon." Conversely, the exciting stuff happens in cut-scenes; when you first see the killer, there's a frantic chase down a darkened street and up a fire escape onto a roof. And you just sit there and watch it. Meh.

Okay, so it's a budget title. But still.

Graphically, I think there is enough impressive work here that I'm interested in seeing what this company does in the future. As a game, even for 20 bucks, it's merely so-so. But there could be some good things to come from these guys.

DO NOT BUY

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: July 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Unless you want to be on the edge of your seat for the rest of your life wondering what the ending is... then don't buy this game. Yes, it was a great game and fun... graphics were good and all that but i worked so hard on a game and wasn't even able to find out the ending which really sucked!

agravating, annoying and pretty cheesy at times

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: July 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game had potential until I had to make cookies, the key puzzle and the ever so annoying robot avoiding lazers part. The robot lazer part is what made me quit, I tried for 2 hours to get past it and I didn't. It just got to annoying for me. This game is basically a jack the ripper wannabe ripoff in it's way, which is ok in my book because I've always been interested in the stories but they should've made this game a little better. I recommend this game if you feel like getting annoyed with a few pointless agravating puzzles, a semi decent story and the making cookies cheeze. Other than that stay away from this one at all cost.

WATCHING PAINT DRY WAS LESS BORING THAN THIS!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: February 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I enjoy games that have a lot of puzzle solving (MYST, for example), but I just couldn't get into this game. This game just moved WAY too slow for my taste. I think the fact that there was very little music (except during the cut scenes) made it seem even slower. Then again, I put a lot of stock into the music of a game, some of you may not.

The graphics aren't the best I've seen, but they're not bad either, except when you are trying to read your journel. Some of the letters are so blurry, it becomes a huge annoyance trying to read it. I actually enjoyed the game up until the second chapter where I had to discover the combination to a safe that had symbols for numbers. OK, its a puzzle, but the item I needed to look at that would give the clue of what number each symbol signified was too blurry to read. I had no choice but to look it up online. You were able to zoom in on the bookshelf it was sitting on, but not the item itself. History has shown that these type of games are better played on the PC, so maybe I would have enjoyed this game much more if I had bought the PC version instead.

The game involves solving the murders of women found naked and eviscerated (a la Friday the 13th or Nighmare on Elm Street); so, it's very dark and morbid. If these kind of storylines interest you, than you may like this game, but if your expecting it to move along at a pace like Resident Evil or even Haunting Ground, then you probably won't like it.

Bottom Line: This game is for a very specific gamer; those gamers will most likely enjoy it, but the rest of you will find it boring. For those gamers who like these type of games, don't get this version, get the PC version instead.

Need help!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: February 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love this game. Great story and fantastic graphics. On the gory side also. If anybody that has played this game knows how to pick the lock on Mark's studio I'd love some help, I'm stuck! Thank you.

seems like a fun game except..

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Well, i baught this game to play in my console (Xbox 360). however the game didn't won 360 console. and it turned to be that some Xbox games don't work on the xbox 360!
well, how would i suppose to know that! and at least there should be a note saying it only works on xbox!
right now i have the game and dunno what to do with it!

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