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!

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