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

Mac

• Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5
• G4 800 MHz or faster processor
• 256 MB RAM
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound card recommended
• 100 MB available hard drive space