Women's Murder Club - Review

James Patterson is a best-selling author who, critics say, writes adequately crummy books. His Women's Murder Clubs series of novels includes ten books and spawned a short-lived Television set serial. There have also been several video game adaptations. Windows Phone seven gamers everywhere, surely, are clamoring for such a game, and thankfully developer Vivid Games and publisher I-Play take heard gamers' desperate calls. Women's Murder Order: Death in Red is an Xbox Live title you won't want to miss!

The Women'southward Murder Club isn't actually a group of people who impale women for sport. Instead, "the serial revolves around the lives of four women in San Francisco – a homicide detective, an assistant district attorney, a medical examiner and a newspaper reporter – who come together to utilise their expertise and talents in their respective fields to solve murder cases," says Wikipedia. Compelling! Death in Crimson takes that exciting premise and makes a pretty decent subconscious-object game.

Flip past the break for our review's thrilling decision!

Under the magnifying glass

Ever read a Where's Waldo or I-Spy book? Like those books, hidden-object games nowadays the player with a cluttered scene and a list of objects to observe. Each location in Women's Murder Club gives the player five minutes to notice 12 or and then objects. Dragging on the screen pans the view around, while pinching zooms in or out. Once an object has been located, borer it will remove it from the scene. Tap the wrong object - or if a tap simply doesn't register properly (which happens a bit as well often) - and a red circle appears, subtracting a few seconds from the timer.

Expiry in Scarlet allots players five hints for every three scenes, which certainly helps when yous can't locate a pesky object. I actually institute the names of the objects were commonly at error rather than my searching skills. Some names weren't descriptive plenty – band is pretty vague, for instance. The game's Scotch tape looks more like masking tape to me. Still, things rarely got so tough that I ran out of time.

Detecting for dummies

Women'south Murder Society weaves elementary puzzles into each scene equally well. White sparkles designate actual interactive things. In the first scene, players accept to commencement find a knife, use information technology to cut some rope, examine a dead woman's legs, and then photograph a Chinese message written on her chest. All before breakfast! Other puzzles involve rotating the pieces of a puzzle until they course a pic, examining blood by dropping information technology into a Petri dish, and more. Completing puzzles is easier than hunting for tiny objects, only information technology adds a little variety and fits the game'south story well enough.

A tale best left untold

Speaking of which, the story alternates between mundane and nonsensical. A guy gets murdered and we find out whodunit, but I couldn't tell you the why'south even if you threatened to brand me read a dozen James Patterson books.

Story scenes come up in 2 forms. I consists of comic panels that scroll kind of fast and tin can't be re-watched. It can be tough to figure out what's happening in these due to their forced scrolling and more often than not crummy artwork. Even worse, an of import mid-game movie theatre consistently crashed the game every time it played out. Eventually I had to just skip it in order to go on with the game. The other, more mutual type of story scene shows one or more character's heads in the heart of the screen while the player scrolls through some text. Information technology's all too boring to intendance about and doesn't do much to inspire one to try out the Women'due south Murder Guild books.

Death in Ruddy's story scenes are too hampered by truly terrible art management. I counted three different art styles: realistic, cartoonish, and i that could pass for bad Flash art. It's like the developers farmed out the fine art and forgot to create a basic style for the artists to use. The actual hidden-object scenes maintain a far more than consistent level of quality.

Short but sweet

Women's Murder Club should have around two hours to complete. It does offer some replay value thanks to particular randomization. Each time y'all visit a scene, you're tasked with finding a different selection of objects, and they appear in dissimilar places. The number of objects per scene is finite, so in that location volition be some repeats. I didn't mind those besides much as they allowed me to concentrate on the harder to find objects.

Easy Achievements

Women's Murder Order commits the launch-game sin of requiring players to be online in gild to earn Achievements. Boo! However, the game'southward Achievements are like shooting fish in a barrel and fun to earn. Completing a scene without zooming, finding a scene'south objects in their listed social club, and finishing a scene without making any mistakes all fit this style of game very well. You lot can count on earning the total 200 GamerScore without too much trouble.

Overall Impression

Women'south Murder Social club: Death in Scarlet may apply a license that nobody cares about, simply bated from the story it's actually quite competent. At that place aren't exactly a ton of hidden object games on Windows Phone 7, so the game offers a unique feel. Anyone who likes this style of game or easy Xbox Live Achievements should non hesitate to attempt information technology.

Women's Murder Club costs $2.99 and there is a free trial. Y'all can catch it here (Zune link) on the Market place.

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