Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 9
A game of departures, of sorts. For developer D'avekki Studios, it's a departure from the "interactive movies" of their previous titles, as Murderous Muses is a fully-3D first-person puzzler that lets you wander around a spooky art gallery. And it's also a departure for everyone's favourite FMV actress Aislinn De'ath, as her character in this is A. blonde, and B. actually wearing shoes.

Murderous Muses has you play a night worker at the Argenta Gallery, on the small island community of Mirlhaven. By day, you hang up paintings and learn about the island's interesting, often macabre, history and customs. You quickly come to the realisation that something is very wrong with the place. One of D'avekki's key strengths in all of their games is their ability to world-build and add just the right amount of subtle horror. Even though their games are built mostly around just talking, there's a creeping dread to them, and it's way more effective for characters to imply all the cosmic horrors the D'avekkiverse holds rather than outright show them.

The main part of the game takes place at night, where you must solve the murder of renowned painter Mordechai Grey. Grey was murdered by one of his final six portrait subjects, and as you watch FMV clips of their portrait sessions (via spooky magic, don't worry about it) it becomes clear that they all have pretty solid motives for it. As with The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, the killer is randomised every playthrough, but with Murderous Muses there's a lot more reason to do multiple playthroughs. During each of the game's three nights, there's a puzzle to solve, and solving the puzzle unlocks a room where you can pick up one of several urns. Placing the urn in the designated area unlocks extra videos, centred around the mysterious and sinister young girl, Kira. Kira seems to be at the centre of all the weird goings-on on the island, so if you're invested in the game's story it's well worth unlocking all of her videos, too.

Side note: Kira is played by Rachel Cowles, daughter of the game's creators, and has appeared in every single D'avekki game. Seeing her grown up a bit in this, compared to the other games, was quite sweet. For a child actor, especially in FMV games, her performances have always been pretty damn good (even if she overdoes the vocal fry way too much here).

So how do you figure out who the murderer is? Each night, the six suspects will have three words underneath their paintings. These three words are also placed on empty spaces in the gallery. Place the suspect's portrait on the empty space above each word, and you'll unlock a short clip of the suspect talking to Mordechai about that word and how it relates to them.

These clips are where you learn all about the characters, their lives, and how they're connected with Mordechai. An undertaker with an unusual appetite, a cancelled comedian (and his creepy puppet), a pair of tennis-playing twins... even for a D'avekki game, the motley crew of maybe-murderers assembled here is a particularly unlikeable bunch.

Watch three clips in the correct order as dictated under the suspect's portrait (which takes a bit of puzzling - the word under a portrait changes after you watch a clip, but they change in a specific order), and you unlock clips of police interviews. You're given a clue at the start of each night (in a fun cameo by Poe & Munro's Klemens Koehring) as to how Mordechai was murdered, and by using these clues you can determine whether each suspect is guilty or innocent in their police interview. If you decide a suspect is innocent, you can rule them out, and whichever suspect has three "guilty" interview answers at the end of the three nights is the killer. Simple!

The game only has one real problem, but it's a big one. My explanation of the game up above is a better tutorial than anything the game actually tells you. The game gives you a tutorial room which does a very poor job of actually explaining the mechanics, then the only other guidance you get is one other video guide, tucked away in a corner of the gallery that most players won't find on their first playthrough. Without a guide, most players will absolutely fumble through their first playthrough and most likely guess the wrong suspect - I got it wrong and the killer turned out to be the person I suspected second-least! Luckily, the game has a lot of replayability, and there's no real penalty for fucking up. After a couple of playthroughs, solving the murder actually becomes secondary to trying to unlock every clip and unravelling the mysteries of Mirlhaven Island.

As usual with D'avekki games, the acting is pretty strong all around. It's no surprise to say that Aislinn De'ath is the standout as undertaker Lilith, showing a lot of unexpected vulnerability in her performance. Also, my heart skipped a beat when I saw bonafide FMV legend Rupert Booth's name in the credits. There's even a part where he says "if I was to show you this...", which I swear was written deliberately. Rikki Stone also puts in great performance as the disgraced comedian Otto - he's a barrel of barely-suppressed rage and is very (intentionally) creepy.

Though it seems confusing from the outside, once you get to grips on what to do this becomes a very enjoyable, even relaxing, little puzzle game.

I've now played every D'avekki game released thus far! Safe to say I've become quite the fan of this studio, and they've definitely helped to develop a fondness for FMV that I never knew I had. I eagerly anticipate whatever comes next from them.

Read my reviews for the other D'avekki Studios games here: The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective, Dark Nights with Poe & Munro

Riding a mech around a large open world, flying from place to play, exploring a destroyed civilization and collecting resources for iirc a "last bastion" type settlement. The concept alone sounded amazing.

But what did I get? Bored as fuck. Overly complicated combat, just basic ass 3rd person shooter gameplay. All this potential and that's all they could do? Maybe they overshot on the scope, maybe they just ran out of budget? And the worst of all...

I had to grind just so my Javelin didn't look dirty as fuck. This is like watching the most beautiful cake you've ever seen, most pristine slice, perfect portion and the first bite draws you in, only to watch the waiter stumble and fall and it lands top side down on the ground. Low hanging fruit of a game to say is "sadly underwhelming" but I wanted to comment anyways.

The first part of the review is a Post-release impression. For a more recent (and truthfully honest) opinion, there's an UPDATE tab at the end. Anthem is a frustrating experience. Because it does a lot of things wrong (basic features included), but what it does right it does so magnificently. Personally, it is undoubtedly the most fun I've had on a video-game in a very long time. But unfortunately, giving my opinion here on whether to BUY this game or not requires a certain degree of objectivity. BioWare, I say this as a long time fan of yours: please get your **** together. You can't expect the same treatment if your game releases in the same state half-a-decade-old games released in. You are the last to enter the market, you are supposed to be the best. And you are not. At least not right now. Anyway. Pros: - The game is stunningly beautiful and runs (almost) smoothly. A few bugs here and there, but most were corrected by the Day 1 patch. The world looks good, the characters look good (I'm particularly fond of my Shelancer), the Javelins look awesome, be it their metallic textures or the more refined meshes. Good stuff. - That Gameplay. Capital G because that's how it freaking had to be done. I can't emphasise enough how much they nailed this aspect. Flying, shooting, making stuff blow up feels satisfying, and each Javelin feels unique and rewarding. You guys can be proud of this. -Actual customization. My Javelin is unique. I know that because no sane person would associate the colors I chose. But thanks to that, I'm 100% sure it's unique. Happy to have the opportunity. -The music. Listen to "Valor". Thank me later. Cons: -The story. This is a BioWare game, and I can very clearly state that it has a story equivalent to any standard 2010s FPS. See the average summer action blockbuster? Add in one or two potentially interesting characters, and you have Anthem's campaign. Choices ? What ?Where ? Everybody's going to experience the same thing. Not bad per se, but easily the least convincing story told by the master storytellers. -Content. Three dungeons and the same three repeatable contracts at Lvl 30. Yeah, not a lot. -Some strange choices. No stat page ? In a stat based game? Also, why doesn't the suiting cinematic happen during loading screens ? A lot of the decisions they made are this confusing. -Loot RNG and drop rates. So umm, either remove the random aspect of those inscriptions (which can give you a 0% bonus on a Masterwork or Legendary item at the moment) or let us have a lot of them so that we have more chance to draw something usable. Investing time isn't rewarding when all the loot you get is worse than what you already have in the endgame. Anthem isn't a bad game. It certainly isn't as bad as Fallout 76 like the congregated score suggests. It has its (incredibly exhilirating) moments. I spent 35 hours on it since its official launch, and I think that's enough of a return of investment, espcially knowing that I will still play it for a long time. But it feels like it needed a little while longer in the oven. It looks like the devs care about this game though, which is very encouraging. That is why I believe I'll wait for the next updates and come back in a few months to update this review. However, and more importantly, I'll borrow a sentence from my ME Andromeda review that heavily saddens me: this just isn't what we've come to expect from a BioWare game. UPDATE: Okay, this is now ridiculous. I take it down a few notches because BioWare is seemingly incapable of taking responsibility for its f-ups. That Roadmap ? Not respected. Communication? Absent. Content? What a joke. Updates breaking the game even more than it was before ? How did you manage that? You had the foundations to build a decent game from where you stood, but I'm sorry, this is a failure. One of the biggest I've ever had the misfortune to witness. And it's BioWare. Sigh. Scrap everything. Change how you work, your view of videogames and your methods. Never thought I'd say this, but let Dragon Age 4 at least go up to Mass Effect Andromeda's quality if you really can't do better. Let this thing rot and let's never talk about it. Ever. Again.