Review Emerald City Confidential Developer: Wadjet Eye Publisher: PlayFirst Genre: Detective/Mystery/Independent Developer Release Date: February 2009 Platform: Review by Greg Collins June 18, 2009		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

For most people, The Wizard of Oz is a classic Hollywood movie starring Judy Garland. But L. Frank Baum was a big star long before Mervyn LeRoy found him. The Land of Oz books were a huge hit in the early part of the 20th century, and there were many stage versions of the story decades before MGM got its mitts on the material. And as spectacular a job as the studio did on the movie, they did meddle quite a bit with the story's particulars. As any attentive Ozian knows, Dorothy traveled to Oz with her pet chicken, Billina, not with her dog Toto. Also the slippers were silver not the Technicolor-friendly ruby in the flick. Most shocking of all, the good witch Glinda was moved from the South to the North. Brrrr, that was cold.

I mention all this because I suspect a lot of players who come to Emerald City Confidential, the new adventure game from Wadjet Eye and PlayFirst, might think that it is these entities who are messing with the legend. Not so. I'm no Ozian expert, but this game clearly is drawing from the wealth of L. Frank Baum Oz material, and not from MGM. In fact, the game practically gives you a crash course in all things Ozian. Queen Ozma is here. Tik-Tok has one of the best roles in the game. The Patch-Work girl has a part -- as a black marketeer. In fact, you get a good overview of the expansive as well as wonderful world of Oz. And, yes, the Wiz himself does put in an appearance. Hell, even the Wicked Witch of the West comes back. This time wisely clutching an umbrella.

The Wonderful World of Oz (or is that the Wonderful World of Disney? whatever) certainly makes a wonderful place to set an adventure game. Or, my guess, a series of adventure games. There is more terrific material here to draw on than the Tin Man can swing an axe at. Oz is such a fantastic setting for an adventure game it's somewhat mind-blowing that this is the first time anyone's used it. Or is it? As far as I know. Maybe it had something to do with the lawyers. Charming old Uncle Walt did apparently have the rights to the artwork. He always wanted to make an animated movie of the Wizard, but died long before his studio came out with the live-action “Return to Oz” in 1985. It too clung loyally to the original Baum version, and probably died at the box office as a result. Audiences who grew up watching the movie every single solitary Easter of their lives were probably baffled by the Disney rendition. A pet chicken? Is that even sanitary?

But Wadjet Eye takes an even greater risk with the material than Disney. Emerald City Confidential stars Petra, a tough-talking greentown private eye. As the story begins, she's hot on the trail of -- well, that doesn't matter. Because the game plops a classic noir mystery right into the midst of Emerald City's colorful inhabitants. Think of The Big Sleep taking place in Munchkinland and you're getting close. Astoundingly, they pull this gambit off. Emerald City Confidential plays as a more than credible mystery story. And it's played more or less straight up, too. Not tongue in cheek. In fact, Emerald City Confidential is the best story in an adventure game that I've run across since Grim Fandango. That was a noir tale in a strange locale too, so perhaps I've just got a taste for such things. Well, I do, but I still think that both of these stories are among the very few that could stand on their own as good fiction, without the pix.

Not that the pix are anything to sneeze at. Emerald City Confidential, though a fairly smallish digital download by today's standards, has some spectacularly good artwork to go along with the good tale. It's all glowing pastelish 2d sprites on colorful backgrounds, but all done with real style as well as expertise. It does look like the biggest Flash game you've ever played, yet beautiful. The backgrounds and some other stuff were done by John Green, who every dedicated adventure game fan should know from his terrific (unfinished) independent game Nearly Departed. Departed is a classic point-and-click adventure that I've been waiting years for Mr. Green to complete. According to his website, he delayed it to do the Emerald City work. Green doing Emerald -- is that kismet, or what? Maybe Kermit.

But wait, there's more! There's the voice work in Confidential. It too is spectacular. Special kudos to the actors who performed Petra and Tik-Tok. All of the characters' line readings are richly acted, however. And the music! The music is, well, pretty good. To be frank, I had it turned down most of the time, but what I heard faintly, I liked.

So great concept, great story, great artwork, great acting -- what's not to like? Well, I'm getting to that. Before we all go strolling arm in arm up the yellow brick road, I do have one rather large critique of Emerald City Confidential that I'd like to spill. It's about the puzzles. Well, what about the puzzles, you ask. And I ask, where are the puzzles? The biggest mystery to me about this mystery story is, why didn't they put any puzzles in it? Answer me that one, Ms. Private Eye. Okay, yes. There are a few what you might call faux puzzles lying about. These are for the people who like to play adventure games and pretend they're solving puzzles. Something like Petra encountering a locked door. "Oh, my, a locked door! However am I to get through?" Hey, Petra, what about that big gold key lying at your feet that's flashing on and off like an airport runway? Let's give that a try. Well, what do you know? It fits the lock perfectly! Puzzle solved! Congratulations!

All right, I promised myself I wouldn't get snide about this. It wouldn't even be a big deal if it weren't part of an ominous, growing trend of ever-easier new adventure games. I recently took Telltale Games to task over the simplicity of the puzzles in the first two Wallace & Gromit games. Those now look like mind-twisters out of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy next to the obstacles in Emerald City Confidential. Okay, at the very end of the game there's a good run of some okay-though-still-fairly-obvious puzzles. But before that this games plays the most like an interactive story of any adventure game I've ever run across. The vast majority of the gameplay is just going from one character to the next, chatting them up until they tell you who next to talk to, and along the way picking up the occasional patently obvious inventory item. And let's not forget the extensive help system! Seriously. Not only does the game flash a huge panel in front of your face announcing every single new objective, but there's a help button. Or some such. I tried my best to ignore it. It took me two nights to play Confidential, and that's because the voice work was so delicious I refused to click through the dialogue. You could download an L. Frank Baum book to your Kindle and have a more challenging "interactive" experience. Ooops! No, I meant Page Up! Oh, dear, where is that dimmer control?

Did I get snide anyway? Sorry. One could play devil's advocate and propose that the absence of any kind of challenge in this game helps move the story along better. It probably does. But I don't play adventure games just to read a good story. I've got a wall full of books for that. I want an adventure game to cleverly integrate the puzzles with the story. Now, I'm sure Wadjet Eye and all the other current adventure game developers are not denuding their games of difficulty simply out of perversity. They either know or guess that it will augment their bottom line. One can't blame companies for giving the public what it's demanding. What I'm puzzled about is why more and more adventure gamers seem to want fewer and fewer obstacles in adventure games. After all, a complete free-of-charge walkthrough almost always appears on the web the second a new game comes out. All you have to do is download it.

Emerald City Confidential is in so many particulars a standout game. The concept, the story, the art, the acting, even the rather jazzy interface all get A's. But the puzzles. What a disappointment. Especially since the mechanics of good puzzle design are there. As Petra progresses, she comes across magic spells that she can store in her inventory and use. Not earth-shakingly original, but a good solid puzzle convention. Yet the answers even to these are telegraphed to the player. Or, at most, one need only try a handful of possibilities in the immediate area to stumble upon the solution. What a shame. The puzzles get an "incomplete." It's not that they're bad, it's that they're missing in action.

Disappointed as I am, I can't overlook the shining qualities that Emerald City Confidential does have. I'm awarding the game an overall grade of B plus. Obviously, if your personal preference is for plot over puzzles, you'll love it. If the opposite, then you'll be grumbling like a Munchkin.

System Requirements:

Windows

• Windows Vista, XP SP1 & 2
• Pentium IV 1.2 Ghz processor or faster
• 256 MB RAM
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• 80 MB available hard drive space