Review of The Painscreek Killings by Relic

Great atmosphere, the open-world, detailed graphics and 3D movement made investigating the town enjoyable. What a true detective adventure should be like, no hand holding, lots of doors remaining locked, occasional bits of useless information, inaccurate maps and unsolved mysteries: what happened to Joshua S. TAYLOR on 03NOV89?

The slightly annoying: long load times between areas, just down to memory management I expect. Lots of obvious places with no tools. I was also prepared to dig up that capsule with the hand spade from the garage, its good enough to do most buried ancient cities.

The perplexing: A lot of my deduction was hampered by unintentional(?) red herrings. Many of the dates/timelines disagreed. eg. both Andrew & Dorothy are said to be born 15NOV42 according to Manor Security. Were they twins? Andrew turns out to be born 22JUL51 according to medical records and gravestone. this is given as his date of hire at the manor. Dorothy on the other hand turns 60 in 1995 according to one diary, so seems neither were born on this date. Mary is hired 03JUN91 according to records, but FEB/MAR93 according to her diary. Scott’s baby blanket has ‘1995’ making him less than a year old at his death. Charles hasn’t seen someone for the last 2 days, after they’ve been dead for over a week (guess he could have been out of town till 2 days ago). One newspaper reports the death of the Dr a month before it happened. Charles writes ‘but what can i do. She’s my wife after all’ on 18NOV95, nothing Charles she WAS your wife and was murdered months ago. Conflicting dates and character’s poor understanding of their own timelines aside, some evidence is just bizarre. A keycard still around and valid years after the person has left.

The Bad: your action-villian Adversary has no presence in the game world until an 11th hour chase sequence, which had me leaving the safety of the locked basement door in order to make the killer aware of where I’d fled to so the ghost of Sofia (or was it Trisha given her choice of finale locale) could then appear the unlock it. So much for my well planned escape when I realised the game had immbolised me as I listened to the way too conclusive latest evidence.

The Good: you action-villian Adversary has no presence in this cold case until the last few minutes. Strange they weren’t destroying all that evidence, especially after they’d nearly been caught exactly the same way 2 years earlier.

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Just Right