Still Life

The Good
There is a lot to like about this game, in fact there's not much wrong with it. The art work is very good and they cleverly use different colour pallets for the different time periods. Very good video sequences in this game.

The sound effects and music are well done. The music is good and does its job without being noticed, I only realised how much it added to the game when, in Chicago, it changed and abruptly started playing some thrash metal dirge that wasn't relevant to the scene at all.

The puzzles are generally good. There is a maze in this game, which I know some gamers hate, but honestly it shouldn't cause too many problems. There's also a sliding block puzzle but most of the game's puzzles are to do with performing tasks in the right order or unlocking safes, boxes etc. The game provides all the information the player needs to solve each puzzle but, be warned, some of the clues are a very subtle.

The game saves, loads and played flawlessly for me under WIN XP but I have seen some reports that it does not play under Vista.

The storyline is good without presenting too many surprise twists and the script is also a sound piece of work that is well executed.

The Bad
The game very linear, there's one path through it and that's it. There are points where I knew what I wanted to do but I could not until I had a conversation with someone who suggested that I take that course of action. Some games do allow a degree of freedom - this is not one of them.

The Bottom Line
A good, solid game that I finished in under fifteen hours. Having said that I did use a cheat sheet twice.

For me the game was good but not remarkable. It's good enough for me to pick up the prequel, Post Mortem, and the sequel, Still Life 2, but it's not something I would play again