Description
Ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention - the Orient Express is about to depart from Paris! Do I hear somebody playing a violin? As the train slowly starts moving away from the station, a young, courageously looking man jumps on it from his motorcycle and makes his way inside. This is Robert Cath, an American about whom we don't know much as we begin the game. In the train, he finds the dead body of the person he was supposed to meet. Now he has to act quickly. The only way not to arise the suspicions of the police is to disguise himself as the murdered man. A very dangerous investigation begins, and the hero soon finds himself involved in a deep net of personal intrigues and political conspiracies.
The Last Express is a true real-time adventure set in 1914, just before the First World War, in a concrete historical and geographical environment. As you gain control of Robert Cath, time begins to flow. If you fail to solve a part of the mystery until the train arrives at the next station, certain events might follow which will lead to a premature and disappointing ending. You cannot die or get stuck in the game, as you can always rewind the clock and try playing any period of time again. Along with some detective work to do and a couple of inventory puzzles, your main task in the game will be to listen to people's conversations, to talk to them, and to solve the mystery by finding out more information about the bizarre case. There are also some action fighting sequences in the game.
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
The Press Says
| Tap-Repeatedly/Four Fat Chicks |
Macintosh |
Sep, 2002 |
 |
100 |
| Aventura y Cía |
Windows |
Apr 24, 2006 |
|
100 |
| Tap-Repeatedly/Four Fat Chicks |
Windows |
Sep, 2002 |
|
100 |
| GameBoomers |
Windows |
Aug, 2006 |
90 out of 100 |
90 |
| Adventure Corner |
Windows |
Dec 28, 2008 |
 |
90 |
| Adventure Corner |
DOS |
Jun 29, 2003 |
82 out of 100 |
82 |
| Quandary |
Windows |
Jun, 1997 |
 |
80 |
| GameSpot |
Windows |
Apr 24, 1997 |
7.9 out of 10 |
79 |
| JeuxVideoPC.com |
Windows |
Dec 07, 2003 |
15 out of 20 |
75 |
| PC Gameplay (Benelux) |
Windows |
Jul, 1997 |
75 out of 100 |
75 |
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Trivia
All the game’s characters are drawn in Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau (French for “New Art”) was a major movement in European arts, starting in the 1880s and declining with the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the time
The Last Express is set in. Artists of all kinds (writers, sculptors, painters like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in France, architects like Gaudi in Spain) aimed for a unification of all arts and for an erasure of stylistic boundaries. Art Nouveau paintings are naturalistic, yet minimalist through the use of clear lines, strong colors and little to no shading. To modern eyes, this makes them sometimes look like cartoon drawings.
The Last Express mimics this style.
Despite their ink-paint look, the passengers of
The Last Express were not hand-drawn, but played by real-life actors. Smoking Car artists processed the blue-screen footage of the characters into thousands of black-and-white stills, which were then recolored in Art Nouveau fashion, rotoscoped (i.e. cut out) and finally projected into the 3D-rendered Orient Express backgrounds. To increase the cartoon look, the actors had to have distinctive features such as beards and hats and wore special costumes with marked lines and strong colors. Make-up artist also tortured them with colored streaks in the hair and a homogenous facial make-up. Take a look at the production pictures
here.
