When I first set out
to play Artematica’s Crime Stories,
I really wasn’t
expecting much. Let’s face it, I’ve seen more exciting names on cereal
boxes, and the“Investigative Thriller/ FBI” billing and milquetoast
packaging did little to pique my interest. To be honest, if my hard-earned dough
had been on the line, I probably would have left this one on the shelf.

That would have really
been a real shame, because, this game turned out to be packed with
just about every element that captures my interest.
Yes, it’s an “investigative thriller,” but with
heavy doses of occult mystery, ancient Aztec ritual, and the pursuit
of immortality. It even has a dash of humor.

The game centers around
Martin Mystere, a professor and FBI agent extraordinaire who’s
called to investigate the brutal murder of esteemed colleague Professor
Eulemberg. If the name Mystere sounds
familiar, it’s no mystery. Not only is the game based on a
comic book character of the same name created by Alfredo Castelli,
it was previously released for the European market under the name
Martin Mystere: Operation Dorian Gray.

While the operations’ namesake isn’t even referenced
in the game, it does give a clue as to the ultimate nature of what
Martin will uncover during his travels. You see, the good Professor
Eulemberg had discovered clues to an ancient Aztec rite of passage,
the nature of which I’ll let you discover for yourself. During
the course of his investigation, Martin will have to follow these
clues to Mexico in hopes of finding the killer.

Martin is accompanied
by his housekeeper Java, an apparently prehistoric man who speaks
only in guttural grunts, delivered Scooby-Doo style.
He also has his buxom wife Diana by his side, whom you’ll actually
be able to control for a brief period of time.

All this travel will require a map, of course. This is a staple
of your inventory, which shows along the bottom of the screen. You
can choose to hide the inventory or show it by clicking an icon on
the bottom left corner of the screen. The top left corner displays
an icon that allows you to save, load, and exit your game.

The interface is overall
intuitive, and operates as standard point and click. The icon changes
to offer one of three options: examine,
use, and talk. You can do any of the three with any object or person,
so this doesn’t always provide clues as to an object’s
use. You can, for example, choose to talk to a chair, but Martin
will respond with something like, “Meh?” Yes, for some
strange reason he says things like “Meh” quite often.

Most of the puzzles were
inventory-based, and were usually quite logical. If I recall correctly,
there was only one traditional puzzle,
and it wasn’t difficult at all. This game won’t pose
a challenge to hard-core adventure gamers, but it’s still quite
fun.

I loved the graphics in
this game, and felt the characters were overall well done. The
Aztec ruins were especially beautiful, and
that’s where this game really shines. Game-play is third person,
and the characters are all rendered in 3D.

Now if I may put on my
hat of disapproval for a moment…as
a woman, I couldn’t help but notice that all the female characters
were portrayed as over-the-top, busty broads with personalities as
two dimensional as the backgrounds on which they’re rendered—the
nightclub pole-dancer included. Diana consistently makes trite, unintelligent
remarks when you take over her character, and her inventory consists
solely of a compact. lipstick, and a diary. While I realize the game
isn’t about Diana (and this is a computer game, after all),
they could have at least tried. Okay, hat of disapproval is off now.
Glad to have gotten that off my chest.

The background environments
are lush and vibrant. Martin’s
luxurious New York home is meticulously detailed, and I enjoyed wandering
around, investigating the knick-knacks. As you might expect, our
friend has eccentric pieces from around the world, and each one has
a story. One of the challenges of this game is sifting through all
the objects, both here and in other places like Professor Eulemberg’s
estate, to discover which ones are relevant. It can be easy to miss
important clues amid all the artifacts. Incidentally, I came to the
conclusion that the game’s designer is a clean freak, because
detergents were everywhere!

Each location has its
own vibe, and appropriately, its own soundtrack. Martin’s
home, for example, featured light jazz, bordering on blues, while
Mexico had a new-age/ ethnic theme. None of the music
intruded on the dialogue, and although repetitive, did not distract
from the environment.

While the music gets two
thumbs up, I can’t say the same for
the dialogue. Now, I’ve heard bad dialogue delivery in my day,
but this game had a special, irritating little quirk. It’s
as though the voice talents read directly from the subtitles themselves,
rather than a script, resulting in sentences that sound something
like this: “Boy, the professor sure has…. A lot of pictures
in the…. study. He must have really enjoyed…. collecting
artifacts…. everywhere that he went… during his extensive….travels. “ Yes,
it really is that bad, and Martin’s comments tend to run on
so long that this becomes excruciating after a while.

There were other problems
having to do with incorrect translation. For example, placing your
cursor on a statue of a griffin outside
Professor Eulemberg’s house yields the description, “police
car,” and there were several times the characters used strange
grammar or phrasing. At one point Diana, she says, “What you
say?” for “How do you say it?,” which sounds very
odd when said with an American accent. Some of these instances are
understandable translation difficulties, but others, like the griffin/
police car snafu, are just plain carelessness. Another oddity I noticed
is that Martin and Diana had different names for the same things.
What Martin called glass furniture, Diana referred to as a cabinet.
I couldn’t figure out if this was intentional to show different
perspectives, or if two translators were at work here.

Because of these unfortunate
flaws, I’m going to have to downgrade
an otherwise enjoyable game. I do recommend Crime Stories to anyone
who enjoys plumbing the depths of ancient mysteries, but I just can’t
say that this is first class material.

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

System Requirements:

• Win ME/2000/XP
• P3 866 Mhz
• 32 Mb Video Card
• 128 Mb RAM
• 700 Mb Available HD
  Space
• 32x CD-Rom
• Compatible Sound Card
• Keyboard & Mouse