Croisière pour un Cadavre
| Developer: Delphine Software | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: US Gold | Sound: |
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| Year: 1991 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Adventure | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
8/10 | |
A detective story set in the 1920s, aboard a cruise ship. You are Raoul Dusentier, a guest, and incidentally, a police inspector. When your host is found dead, stabbed in his office, you are logically entrusted with the investigation.
No sooner have you arrived at the scene than you are knocked unconscious! You wake up a few hours later, and the body has disappeared…
It’s up to you to question the passengers. They’ll tell you as little as possible, and you’ll have to constantly go back and forth to confront their statements. As the plot unravels, oddly enough, the suspects will become more talkative, even accusing one another.
The main feature of this game is the sense of a closed setting. You’re stuck on a ship at sea, and that’s where you’ll stay for the duration of your investigation.
Additionally, you’re free to roam, and unlike Mortville Manor, you can do things out of order and harass people with your questions without permanently ruining your chances of solving the case. Freedom and non-linearity!
The inventory system is very simple, and there are plenty of objects to examine, though not many meaningful clues. It adds a bit of realism, certainly, but it quickly becomes tedious to systematically search every cabin, every corridor, every piece of furniture, often for nothing.
If by some stroke of luck you find a clue or important information, the minute hand on your watch will move forward by ten minutes. Time passes in fits and starts, while the protagonists lead their lives, move around, and leave clues behind, forcing you to return endlessly to places you’ve already visited. The map is very handy for getting to where you want to go quickly, provided you actually know where that is…
As for the plot, it’s fairly well constructed and not lacking in humour (with some references to Tintin). There are nonetheless some hard-to-overlook inconsistencies: the body disappears right under the butler’s nose, no explanation? No witness? You’re looking for proof, motives, but you never ask the suspects where they were at the time of the crime? And the epilogue is a bit outlandish, you’ll see.
Graphically, the settings are refined and picturesque. Atop these, the 3D vector characters move smoothly and are nicely animated. However, the soundtrack remains a bit underwhelming.
One thing I don’t get, it seems the original version was written in French and then translated into English. Yet, both versions suffer from glaring grammatical errors. Even in French, it feels like a translation. So, either I’ve got my hands on a version that was re-translated into French, or the script was written by an intern on a language exchange, anyone know?
Anyway, if you’re into detective novels in the style of Hercule Poirot and point-and-click adventure games, I’m sure you’ll find this one quite boring convincing. What?
In the same vein, I recommend Return of the Obra Dinn (2019).
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