GET A ‘CLUE’

Just as a quick sidenote
to begin with, you’ll probably notice
these four things:

a) it’s called the
Clue Chronicles
b) it’s called Episode I
c) the release date was 1999-2000
d) there’s no mention of Clue Chronicles on Just Adventure

Now you’ll ask yourself:

a) Why isn’t there
a 2nd or 3rd episode available?

Now I’ll kindly
respond:

a) The Clue Chronicles
CD-ROM adventures was supposed to become a three-part series, but
Hasbro folded and EAI quit the gaming business,
so the somewhat promising project was dropped. There have been rumors
about a resurrection of the series but it’s clear here that
only an independent developer can bring back the series.

And now, back to our regular programming.

SHIP-WRECK (no jokes)

I’ll start off by saying that the Clue Chronicles concept was
simply brilliant. You don’t see very many straightforward mystery
games out there anymore (Sorry, Amy J!), and it was nice to incorporate
the famous mystery-related characters ever. The idea flopped, however,
when the developers tossed in Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, David Blaine,
the female version of Sigfreud, and an artistic version of Christopher
Reeve. Add in some dicey voice acting, deadly bugs, mind-boggling
plot, and you’ve got a game that’s quite a handful.

Your game starts on your
host’s luxurious cruise ship, as
you meet each of the characters and press them for everything from
the identities of their enemies to their financial needs. What a
crew. They all hate each other, deny ever meeting another, are suspicious
of each other, and, to make matters worse, they don’t know
why the hell they’re even here. When the host finally does
show up, he appears to be a little insane, and turns up dead when
you give him one of his own oriental antiquities. As if things couldn’t
get more hectic, nobody trusts you anymore. It’s safe to say
that at the beginning of the game, all hell has broken loose – even
though the biggest surprises haven’t even gotten underway yet.

From the boat, you travel
on a rickety cable car during a blizzard (snow daaaaaayyyy!). The
most obnoxious part here was having characters
yelling blind comments at you, such as, “Anyone up for a trip
back to the ship?” or “Pull back on the lever!” while
you are trying to avoid a fire. They make no comments about the situation
at hand, and walk off calmly when arriving at their deceased host’s
grand chateau as the cable car burns up like a tinderbox. If the
characters don’t care about the danger, why should you?

So, in less than an hour,
you’ve managed to travel from the
bottom of an icy ravine all the way to top, and you’ve encountered
death, fire, blizzard, and angry people. This is one hell of a New
Year’s Eve party.

JUST THE FACTS,
MA’AM

As I mentioned before,
the idea for the game was great. Seeing the seductive Miss Scarlet
and the gallant Colonel Mustard in 3D really
makes you feel good inside. But the addition of the other, newer
characters baffles me. They were only added in to add some sense
to parts of the game – i.e. have a hypnotist conduct a séance,
and a temperamental artist draw out a rebus puzzle. (Mrs. White
doesn’t do everything around here anymore.) However, they
just aren’t as classic as the others. Nobody enjoys being
around a woman who’s always trying to test you for ESP, or
a man who only responds, “Bah!” to all of your necessary
questions. Furthermore, their voices sound awful. The accents all
sound forged, and the American accents are all British people trying
to fake their way through the script. I’m not sure why,
but it feels like every character is from some different part
of the
world. (Scarlet being the only true American.)

The plot essentially
revolves around nothing for the first several hours of gameplay
except the questions of a) Who killed the host?
and b) Why are these people here? This becomes clearer when your
introduction to part three explains a list of riddles that you have
decode in order to find six jewels. As usual, only the classic suspects
are included in this, but the situations in which these riddles are
presented are just odd. Professor Plum forgets his riddle, so you
have to try and hypnotize him to get his memory back, and old Mrs.
White won’t talk until you interpret one of her nightmares.
Is this a joke, or what? It’s no classic whodunit, anymore,
it’s just plain strange.

The worst part, however,
is when you discover one of the jewels, resulting in a series of
cartwheels around the house, soon followed
by an error message that terminates the game. Talk about ‘Fatal
Illusion,’ this game should be ‘Fatal Error.’ There
are patches available on the Hasbro website, but they don’t
solve all of your problems, so my only advice here is to save, save,
save, or risk pounding your head against the keyboard for hours.

OK, SO . . . WHAT HAPPENED?!

When it’s all said and done, you’ve gone through hours
of hypnotizing, dream interpreting, rebus decoding, statue breaking,
weapon stealing, getting knocked unconscious, performing petty magic
tricks, and witnessing at least two ‘murders.’ What a
night. I bet even the guys at the bar won’t believe this one.

The ending goes by in
a blur, leaving many unanswered questions. Perhaps they were going
to be revealed in the game’s sequel;
apparently, Hasbro was depending on Episodes 2 and 3 to answer everyone’s
burning questions, but the time never came, and those questions have
still been left with no resolution.

I praise Hasbro for a
great game idea and puzzle creation, but the game simply didn’t
hold together all too well and deserved a lot more time and energy
to make it better.

FINAL GRADE: C+

(P.S: For those who are stuck, a walkthrough is available here.
For those who have finished, e-mail me with any of your questions/comments
about the game here.)

Final Grade: C+

System Requirements:

• 133
  MHz Pentium
• Windows
  95/98
• 16
  MB RAM
• 2
  MB SVGA video card compatible with DirectX version 6.0 or higher
• 80
  MB free hard drive space
• Keyboard
• Mouse