Crime Stories: From the Files of Martin Mystère

aka: Das Eulemberg-Experiment, Martin Mystère: Operación Dorian Gray, Martin Mystère: Operation Dorian Gray, Martin Mystère: Operazione Dorian Gray
Moby ID: 16040

Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 58% (based on 32 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 2.9 out of 5 (based on 20 ratings with 1 reviews)

Short but interesting to a certain point

The Good
Being so close to the Italy, my country publishes abundance of italian comics, one of them indeed is Martin Mystery. However, never was interested in that one, nor Dylan Dog, I was more into Zagor, Tex or Alan Ford (speaking of which, those would make much better adventures if only someone would use them). But when it comes to a 3rd-person point and click adventures, I don't select much, I pick almost immediately. I must say I was expecting this game to be on much higher level of production, at least something on par with amazing Moment of Silence, but alas, it was not nearly as rich. Still, in its own simpleness, it's a fine adventure that reminds me of certain LucasArts classics.

The graphic is amazing, but everything is pretty much static backdrop hence the quality. The music, for little it seemed present, is also fantastic, loved the Veracruz theme. So, in this game you meet the protagonist, Martin, his ever-trusty companion Java, and Martin's wife. For simplicity it presents, this game certainly gives us plenty to like. That way looking, it's very similar to MGS2 which was so rich in what all we could do in that game, but game was over so quickly we probably didn't get chance to try half of those things. A similar feeling was stenciled on me after finishing this game.

The Bad
Voice-acting although good has badly implemented pauses during conversation so it sounds like sentence it finished and new one comes for something like this...

I wanted to tell you that

I don't think it is a good idea to

come looking for me because

it may get very dangerous.

...so what we hear is only what we see as subtitles until it switches to new screen. It even sounds as if they were recorded as separate sentences, it's really not something you'd expect to see in game from 2004/5 no matter how new the company is. But okay, you can click near the end of sentence to switch to new and somehow make your listening more pleasant.

Next thing, text is way too fast. Yeah, all of you bookworms won't have trouble with it but for some slow-poco like me, I need to look at some item twice to read what I missed the first time. That is because there is no voice-acting there, so whether sentence has three words or thirteen, it will hold on equally long on the screen. That can be very unsettling when there is lots of things to check and long elaborations of each.

And the last thing, which is subjective, is the story. I didn't like it at all. Not how it's been done. Maybe it just didn't capture my interest enough, but just didn't make the cut, and characters didn't either. And that bad girl seems like a replica of the blondie from Broken Sword 3. Seems the only good things in this game were actually graphics and the music as far as I can tell. Of course, I can never say no to any 3rd-person point 'n' click adventure, so I also like it for just being that.

The Bottom Line
The game doesn't feel short, it is short, so don't use any walkthroughs or you won't like the outcome of purchasing it. I can't say I remember more than 30 different locations (by that I mean 5-6 actual locations, just each with couple different static shots), but day/night adds a bit of difference to it. Also, it looks much more realistic than in games where you need to pass half the globe to unravel the mystery. For all the MM comics fans this game was probably for some time on the wish list, but otherwise it's just another mediocre adventure game pulled out from a long series of episodes. From what I could tell, this could be a single episode put into the game. But honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing fifty more to come.

Windows · by MAT (240569) · 2012

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by Jeanne, Wizo, Scaryfun, Patrick Bregger, Xoleras, rstevenson, deepcut, MrMamen, Sicarius, Emmanuel de Chezelles, Víctor Martínez, Alaka.