Review Mata Hari: Betrayal Is Only a Kiss Away Developer: Cranberry Production GmbH/ Publisher: Viva Media (North America) Genre: Historical Release Date: July 2009 Platform: Review by Randy Sluganski September 18, 2009		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

There are probably only two people in the adventure development community whom would be bold enough to create a commercial game based on such obscure and esoteric subject matter as Mata Hari. One would be Lee Sheldon who, along with a handful of games for The Adventure Company based on Dame Agatha Christie titles, also created the classic Ripley’s Believe it or Not: The Riddle of Master Lu. The other would be Hal Barwood – a Lucas Arts castoff from their nefarious adventure talent purge a few years ago who was credited with Writing/Dialogue/Story/Design on such classics as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis among numerous others. Hal, along with long-time collaborator Noah Falstein, is credited with the story and design for Mata Hari.

Similar to historical thrillers such as Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City and Dan Simmon’s Drood, Mata Hari - whose name meant ‘eye of a new dawn’ - is a work of fiction based on fact with historical figures making guest appearances in an attempt to validate the story. By the end of the game we will have met up with physicist Marie Curie, a Nobel Prize winner for her work with radiation; French impresario Gabriel Astruc, founder of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; and Emil Jellinek, designer of the Mercedes-Benz, among others. Okay, not exactly household names in this day and age, but well-known in their time. Unfortunately, what what works so well in literature, falls flat on pc.

The game has an antiquated feel about it. What worked so well ten or fifteen years ago just doesn’t scream ‘play me!’ in 2009. The story opens in 1963 as an associate of Mata relates her remembrances of the dancer to a biographer. We then fade back to 1905 as relative newcomer to Paris Mata Hari attends a ballroom social gathering where she hopes to impress the famed Gabriel Astruc into being her manager.

As Astruc is unfamiliar with the dancer, he instructs Mata to find party-goers who will vouch for her abilities. She must then approach any of the dozen people in attendance until finding one who will, for example, state that yes, Mata is an exotic dancer. Mata must then return to Astruc and tell him – are you ready for this? – Mr. So-and-So over there says he will vouch for my dancing abilities. Are you kidding me? Wouldn’t it have made much more sense to have Mr. So-and-So approach Astruc and strike-up a conversation about Mata? It’s ridiculous, it’s nonsensical and it gets the game off to a rip-roaring snooze of a start.

Would it also have been asking too much to open the game with a cinematic style flashback tinged with a touch of espionage? Instead we are presented with a biographer interviewing one of Mata’s friends in 1963 whose reminiscences then fade into a flashback and we are dragged kicking and screaming along as Mata Hari attends the aforementioned social gathering before eventually carrying out her harebrained, avaricious schemes.

As a historical figure, Mata Hari is certainly not someone to be admired. She is the archetype of the femme fatale and while she is credited with raising exotic dancing to an art form – no mean feat back in the repressed early 1900’s – she was also accused of being a double agent who betrayed her adopted country and was executed – maybe unjustly – by a French firing squad in 1917. While I realize that other accepted genres might have the gamer play as a mercenary or a cold-blooded killer; that is fine for their tastes. But as someone who plays adventure games, I find it somewhat difficult to empathize with a character whom, according to numerous historical sources, lied about her heritage, lied about her dancing background, most likely was not a double-agent and most likely was someone who prostituted herself under the pretense of national security (insert your own G.O.P./Sarah Palin joke here).

Set in the pre-WWI Belle Époque golden age, the picturesque graphics drip with the atmosphere of that period, a feeling that is enhanced by an evocative score. There are though very, very few locations in the game. When you travel to Berlin, for example, you can only visit the main street, a hotel room to the right or an Officer’s Club to the left and there are rarely any hotspots on any of the screens. Unfortunately, the effect of any picturesque scenes are often diminished during conversations with characters in close-up as their stiff and herky-jerky movements seem to imply that they have too much starch in their undergarments.

A pair of mini-games bog down the proceedings even further. The first is a turn-based game in which a Mata Hari token – in lieu of presenting an animation of traveling aboard a train – must be moved from city to city with agents in pursuit. If Mata is caught, she is returned to the station. If you are successful in moving her to the target city, you receive points towards your ‘Skill’ trait. The points and money you earn in three traits overall – Skill, Spycraft & Wealth – determine which ending you will see at the end of the game. There is an option to skip this part of the game – and you may eventually wish to do so as the amount of train travel back-and-forth between countries just to obtain one inventory item becomes ludicrous – but you then forfeit an opportunity to increase your Skill points.

The second would have you dance like Mata Hari in order to obtain money. To do so, you must click your cursor on musical notes at a precise moment as they scroll across the screen. The dancing is a silly device that in a better game would have been overlooked, but in this game sticks out like a sore belly button on a stripper. The first attempts are actually fun but as the game progresses the notes zoom across the screen quicker and quicker and what had been fun becomes frustrating. It is bad enough that developers believe that these types of ‘novelties’ need to be put into adventure games, but it is inexcusable to continually ramp up the difficultly to the point where they become exasperating.

What is particularly amusing is that Mata will not perform until she finds herself ‘inspired’ – you know, artiste temperament and all that – and for inspiration you must search the streets until finding some animated object that will, after clicking on it with the cursor, suggest a new dance move to Mata. For example, the motion of an organ grinder winding his machine provides motivation for a new move involving her arms. But easily, the most humorous is that the sight of clouds moving overhead somehow suggests a step that involves bending forward at the waist and then shaking her butt. Can you imagine what the crowded city sidewalks would look like if everyone was inspired to shake their booty just by looking at clouds?

Another failed but noble attempt at innovation is the addition of a dialogue tree that has you choose between four different types of seduction – flattery, daring, dismissive or yielding - in order to elicit information from unsuspecting informants. The problem is that there never seem to be any specific clues provided as to what mode should be chosen for a character, but even this isn’t a problem for there is no penalty for choosing incorrectly and you can just keep trying until finally picking the correct approach.

The puzzles are old-school point-and-click among a selection of inventory items. They are for the most part believable with the exception of a note in the window/camera conundrum and a sequence in Marie Curie’s laboratory that is silly and unbelievable in both its concept and presentation. There is also an overdependence on old, stale puzzles presented in a different guise. Tapping a phone is just a variation of fuse box and reroute the electricity puzzles. An in-game diary is somewhat useful as it can point you in the right direction if momentarily stumped.

In the final analysis though, Mata Hari the game is something that Mata Hari the person never was: boring and pedestrian. When Mata was executed by a firing squad in 1917, she was, as was the French custom of that time, decapitated and her head sent to The Museum of Anatomy in Paris were it was preserved for dissection. In July of 2000 it was discovered that Mata Hari’s head was missing from the museum and officials have speculated that was stolen by an admirer during relocation to a new building in 1954. Now that would be an interesting scenario for a game!

Final Grade: C- (find out more about our grading system)

If you liked this game, then Play: The Riddle of Master Lu Watch: Showgirls Read: Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP/Vista
• CPU: 1.6 GHZ (minimum) 2.0 GHZ (recommended)
• RAM: 512 (minimum), 1 GB (recommended)
• Graphics Card: 128 MB (minimum), 256 MB (recommended)
• Direct X: 9.0