[Devilfish]

I just picked up Still Life and am playing it for the first time, but it has come to my attention that there was a prequel, Post Mortem. It's supposed to be... not so good. Will I miss anything if I play Still Life without having played Post Mortem? I know Still Life is a stand-alone game, but I pretty anal about these things. Am I going to miss in-jokes or bits of background story? Is Post Mortem worth playing just to get more out of Still Life? If that's the case, I'm going to try and get a hold of Post Mortem first, but I'd like some opinions on this.

Thanks!

[Molgera]

I only played Still Life, but it doesn't seem to be any big deal to skip Post Mortem. You're definitely not going to feel lost or like you're missing any information.

[CoyoteAG]

You won't miss out on anything if you play Still Life without playing Post Mortem. I played Still Life first and then played Post Mortem. It didn't add anything to the Still Life experience IMO.

[crabapple]

If you're going to play both, be sure to play Post Mortem first.
In Post Mortem you play Gus. In Still Life you play Victoria, Gus's granddaughter as well as Gus. Although it's not absolutely necessary to play Post Mortem in order to play Still Life, I'm glad I played Post Mortem first. It may even give some clues about the nature what's going on in Still Life.

[mgeorge]

I found Post Mortem the better game personally. It was somewhat non-linear, which is rare in an AG, had a good story and graphics for the time, and a great film Noir feel to it.

I never finished Still Life. Once I got to the

Spoiler:

baking

puzzle, I decided to call it quits. Not so much because the puzzle was bad, I just didn't see any relevance to the plot of the game.

Of course you shouldn't listen to me as most of the games people like around here are ones I do like, and the ones I like they don't.

[Devilfish]

Alright, so that's a fifty-fifty vote then. I think I'll be picking up Post Mortem. There's probably worse ways to spend a couple of bucks and some free time.

Thanks very much for the advice!

[Mohlin]

Why is everybody so upset about the baking-puzzle? I got it in first go.
I do agree though that it had absolutely nothing to do with the plot, and in that case was very annoying.

[orient]

I enjoyed Post Mortem a lot. It's not the best adventure game I've played by any means, but it has a great atmosphere, and I commend the nonlinear approach to the game-play. If you think about it, it's kind of ridiculous that in most AGs there's usually only one way to solve a puzzle.

[terhardp]

I'm a big fan of "Still Life" (original) and while the "sequel" isn't worthy to hold a nearly burned out candle for it, it was a pretty funny experience for me. I haven't played "Post Mortem" yet because of rather bad official review on AG. Like with "Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened", it seemed to me that it's not a big deal to skip the game. But in the end, I've played it, and it was rather good actually. Not nearly as the "Arsene Lupin" and "Jack the Ripper", though, but better than I've thought it would be. Maybe this is also the case for "Post Mortem", so maybe I will squeeze it between several new titles which I will certainly play.

[rayvio]

I haven't tried Still Life 2 yet, it's sitting there gathering dust as I keep putting off trying it. I did try Post Mortem though, but I kept running into the blank screen bug and nothing fixed it so I gave up. what little I did play didn't draw me in too much. the dialogue was badly written and the interface rather clumsy. had it not been for the bugs I probably would've given it a better chance

[nonax]

Originally Posted by terhardp

I haven't played "Post Mortem" yet because of rather bad official review on AG. Like with "Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened", it seemed to me that it's not a big deal to skip the game. But in the end, I've played it, and it was rather good actually.

So is Post Mortem a very good game imo. The only thing is that the game is somewhat dated and that shows in the game-play. It might even give some problems on modern machines/OSes like Rayvio reports. The story and the puzzles however stand out and show where still-live is coming from.

[Bon]

Post Mortem's story kinda sucks - the game's too short to develop a good suspense thriller/whodunnit. There's just not enough plot. And yes, the dialogues are bad, amateurish. They're comprised of lines regular, real life people would say, and that's not good for a noir, stylized, all-night-all-rain type of story (tho, that's the way things are in Still Life too). But the atmosphere is good in PM, and gameplay's not really that bad. If I were you, I wouldn't play any of them - life's too short to waste it on mediocre adventures.

[Majsan]

You don´t have to play Post Mortem before Still Life. The only advantage, if you do, is that you will know who Gus is.

[rtrooney]

Originally Posted by Bon

Post Mortem's story kinda sucks - the game's too short to develop a good suspense thriller/whodunnit. There's just not enough plot. And yes, the dialogues are bad, amateurish. They're comprised of lines regular, real life people would say, and that's not good for a noir, stylized, all-night-all-rain type of story (tho, that's the way things are in Still Life too). But the atmosphere is good in PM, and gameplay's not really that bad. If I were you, I wouldn't play any of them - life's too short to waste it on mediocre adventures.

Can't agree with any of the statements you made. Both PM and SL1 are excellent adventures despite the one or two puzzles that everyone hates. To say "the atmosphere is good in PM, and gameplay's not really that bad" and then say the game is mediocre seems to be a contadiction.

[Bon]

I don't think it's a contradiction because, when it comes to adventures, story and dialogues are equally important as gameplay (and they're even more important in Still Life), so if they're bad and gameplay is not that bad (but really nothing outstanding), then that particular adventure is mediocre.

As for the puzzles, Still Life is pretty good in that region (tho, nowhere near, say, Day of the Tentacle). I even liked the notorious cooking puzzle. Sure, it may not have anything to do with the overall storyline, but then again, bunch of the stuff you do in an adventure game doesn't make much sense as well. Like, why do you try to pick up every object on the screen before knowing what do with it?

[millenia]

Just finished Post Mortem. I played it through the secret room years ago but for some reason not the very end. I honestly don't recall why I left it unfinished, perhaps there was some technical issues or my computer had problems. Now finally I wanted to try it again inspired by a couple of threads mentioning it.

I think both Post Mortem and Still Life are very good games. Still Life is more smooth and polished but Post Mortem has other good qualities to make up for it.

In PM the UI is rather clumsy but nothing horrible, inventory system is frustrating though. Just a few items visible at a time and I have to scroll through them one by one to reach the new item that pops into some random place, that is never close to the items I had visible. Would have been manageable if all the documents would at least disappear after reading them or just go into the document "folder" in the first place.

The dialogue trees are the strenght and weakness of PM. The non linearity and multiple ways to solve problems are great but in PM this is implemented rather poorly as you constantly run into obsolote dialogue options and once in a while into something you shouldn't be able to say yet (Gus is a kind of a seer but I don't think he's mean to predict the future that way).

Still with these weaknesses the game is great. I could only hope that they'd put some more effort into it and it would certainly be among my greatest adventures. In the same way Still Life is cut too short but still it's a blast as long as it takes. Both games are very atmospheric and they have intriguing stories. I really hope they would dig up this franchise and give us some more games (I might choose to forget SL2).

Both games had one stupid puzzle too. The painting in PM was a pain in the ass and I just didn't find the 15th piece, had to check it up. The cooking puzzle was equally stupid. But I never let one silly puzzle take the fun out of the game.

Post Mortem - 4+/5
Still Life - 4.5/5
(Still Death 2 - 2/5)



Strange thing about Awakened here, I consider it easily the strongest and most interesting of these modern SH games.