Clue Chronicles: Fatal Illusion Review

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Clue Chronicles: Fatal Illusion

Review by Jen

In what must be a masterpiece of undermarketing, I had never heard anything about this game despite being pretty plugged in to what’s going on in the adventure game business. I simply saw it in my local Software Etc. and bought it based on my fond memories of the board game Clue and because it looked like—gasp!—an adventure game. And sure enough … read on while I chronicle my Clue experience.

Egypt, not long after the turn of the century. A shocking murder in a tent by an assassin with an impressive array of weapons that includes a knife, a candlestick, a rope … (he uses the knife).  Fast forward to New Year’s Eve 1938. The world is on the brink of war, and a group of people find themselves thrown together on a mysterious yacht cruising the Rhine on the way to attend a mysterious party given by a mysterious host at his mysterious castle atop a mysterious mountain. Murder and mayhem. What does it all mean? You, as “Player,” the private investigator, must find out. Your mysterious host, Ian Masque, mysteriously dies immediately after you hand him a Chinese puzzle box. You interview all of the usual suspects, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. Peacock, Miss Scarlet, et al., plus a handful of new characters tossed into the mix just for this game. And no, Mrs. White did not do it in the library with the wrench. I don’t want to discuss too much more about the premise for fear of taking away any surprises.  Suffice it to say, the story in this game is surprisingly tightly plotted—not what you’d expect from an adventure game based on a board game.

There are definitely some odd things about this game. For instance, great care was taken in rendering the locations, even down to the moving reflections in the shiny hallway floor of the mansion.  But the characters would plunk themselves down in one spot and not move—once you knew where they were sitting, there they would stay until the end of the act. Even if they were to get up off their duffs and participate in a cutscene, they would return to their original spots. And then since I figured this out right away, of course I would always go right back to where I’d expect to find a certain character, and the character would be gone!  only to magically reappear as soon as the CD quit spinning.

Fatal Illusion’s interface was cumbersome. The backgrounds and locations were richly detailed, but the directional movements and what you can look at are severely limited. This made for a very easy game. Again, too, you have to wait for the CD to spin down before you can see your cursors. Inventory items are awkward to use—you have to left-click on something to pick it up, which is simple enough, and right-click on something to view it—again, simple enough—but to combine inventory items, you have to pick one up and click it on the other, and then the bigger of the two will pop up on your screen and the smaller one stays in inventory, so you have to pick it up again and then put it on the bigger item. Also, even if you know what to do with an item, sometimes you aren’t allowed to do it until it is “time.”

On the other hand, there were a couple of times where I was allowed to do something out of order, to the detriment of the gaming experience.  For instance, right near the beginning, there is a combination lock. I had no clue what the combination might be and thought I’d already talked everyone to death, and so I took the hint (there is a built-in hint system, a nice feature), entered the room, did everything there, and only later found I’d missed talking to the character who gave me the clue to the combination. Other times, you see something you’d like to fiddle with, and the “Player” says, “better not fiddle with that until I know more about it,” and you have to get the character’s clue first and then go back to it. Very inconsistent, what?

Overall, though, despite what I just said, most of the puzzles were logical and fun. Most of the first act aboard the yacht involves talking to the characters and getting a feel for what’s going on, why the characters are there, and why they have been thrown together to attend the party. The second act is purely mechanical manipulation as you repair a cable car to take you to the mountaintop mansion. The third act, the bulk of the game, is where the puzzles get really intense—you must get a clue from each “color” character and locate six jewels based on their clues. The puzzles are mostly pretty easy, but there are a couple of stumpers. I do confess to resorting to the hints more than once, maybe even more than twice, if the truth be told.

Character interaction is done via use of a notebook. You click on the character with whom you wish to speak, and the notebook pops up with the available questions/remarks. You click on the one you want to try, the full question shows up on the bottom of the screen, and then you click on that to actually “say” it. However, there are no dialogue trees; you simply ask what questions are on the notebook and that’s it. You, as “Player,” have no voice—there is just a moment of silence and then the game character gives a response. This was a little disconcerting at first but turned into a blessing since you didn’t have to listen to yourself “read” the question.

The voice acting is simply atrocious. Every character has a (bad) accent, and they all sound like they’re reading from a script into a microphone in the conference room there at Hasbro’s headquarters.  The music is awful, too. It’s much too repetitive. However, there are options for turning down both music and voices, and you can even turn on subtitles. I turned the music down and turned up both the voices and the subtitles, and the subtitles didn’t always match what the characters were saying, and I don’t mean just a word here and there—sometimes whole sentences would be missing from the text.

Overall, despite its many flaws, Clue Chronicles: Fatal Illusion was a fun game to play, if too short (it took me maybe six hours). The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Engineering Animation, Inc.  Publisher: Hasbro Interactive Release Date: November 1999

Available for: Windows

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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

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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17 Responses to First Impressions: Heavy Rain

  • Toger

    I hate QTEs, but Heavy Rain is sitting in my Amazon cart waiting for me to push the button. I don’t even own a PS3, but I plan on buying the game anyway. I do have a good friend who’ll let me play at his house. Of course, I’ll have to drive 100 miles, one way, through the snow to get to his house. His chat-happy birds will cheerfully chirp thereby completely disrupting any atmosphere, but I can play.

  • David

    What!?  Heavy Rain is full of QTEs?  I totally did not see that coming.

    The whole dad experience thing sounds intriguing.  I’m already getting odd looks from my girlfriend for exclaiming over cute kids on the bus or at the mall, something like what you described might send my biological clock over the edge.

  • Lewis B

    My sentiments exactly David!

    Mat has been playing the Heavy Rain demo for a while now, and although he admits he is intrigued by the story, he does constantly complain about the control method.

    R2 + Analogue stick to run? *scoff*

  • Gregg B

    @Lew: DEMO?! PS3 DEMO?! *runs off to PS3*

    That sounds like the Batman: Arkham Asylum controls – Crazy Bonkers Design. The sort of design that puts pull handles on push doors.

    @Steerpike: “I despise children. They are disgusting and annoying. They knock things over. They interfere with everything. They’re not useful until they’re at least 13, when you can get them to mow the lawn and stuff. But you can pay a service to do that for just a few hundred bucks a year and the service won’t vomit on you, shit in its diapers, grow up to resent you, or otherwise suck. Don’t flame me and don’t post comments to the contrary: kids are repulsive. Why anyone would want them is beyond my feeble imaginings.”

    HAHAhahaha- I er, – hahahaha – you’re as outspoken as me about demon spawn children.

  • Lewis B

    Yeah its been on the internet for weeks and weeks Greggi.  I think you have to do a couple of online puzzles etc to get the appropriate code or something.

    Search on Kotaku, they first ran with it IIRC.

  • Mat

    The puzzle code was for early access before it hit the PSN Store. It’s been available to all since last week.

    Regarding the demo, it took me around 3 or 4 attempts at it to appreciate it. First time around I couldn’t have been more dissapointed by it, but after the 3rd or 4th I decided I wanted to stick with it. I don’t think the demo is a particularly great example of what the game supposedly does best either – choice. I also HATE the control scheme and some of the voice acting is so wooden. Creating an immersive, realistic game is fine but having characters stumbling into tables and fridges because of the ham fisted controls, and listening to French voice actors impersonate Americans does remove that realism a little!

    Still, I rushed out to buy it this morning and will rush home from work to play it in about an hour!

  • xtal

    @ Toger: I don’t own a PS3 either, and it’s not like Heavy Rain seems to be “that” game which makes you run out and buy one– like Bioshock made me run out and get a 360– and it’s also not like this game looks groundbreaking in any way, because it really doesn’t. It’s just got me curious…and people tend to do crazy things the week after they get their yearly bonus. Soooooo yeah, who knows; maybe I’ll own a PS3 soon, but like hell I would admit that it was for Heavy Rain. Psh. I’d tell people it was because I wanted to watch BSG on blu-ray; though anyone who knows me would see right through that lie since I am an avid non-format-upgrader: I’ll switch my BSG collection from DVD to blu-ray the day I upgrade my copy of Jurassic Park from VHS to DVD. (Hint: never)

  • Toger

    @xtal: I’m in no hurry to upgrade my meagre DVD collection to blu-ray either, but I have to say the movies I’ve watched on my friend’s PS3 are absolutely stunning. Blade Runner was simply breath-taking in blu-ray and it made me want a PS3. I don’t think Heavy Rain will be a system seller for me, but I’m betting the game from the Ico team will.

  • xtal

    A game from the Ico team, you say? Hmmm. I’ve been making rounds on Kijiji and Craigslist looking for a copy of Ico (eBay prices are so shudder-inducing) for a few days now. I really need to play that game after my experience with the indescribable Shadow of the Colossus.

    It’s good to know they haven’t died some Interplay-esque death in the meantime.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Nope, they’re a small team that works within Sony. Fumito Ueda is the lead and he’s got like ten or so people who’ve worked with him on all his games. Sony pretty much lets them do what they want.

    The Last Guardian is the game that’s coming up from them. It looks more like Ico and less like Shadow of the Colossus to me, which is to say it appears to be focused on platform elements. If I didn’t already have a PS3, it’d be the game that sells it.

  • Gregg B

    @Toger: Ooh, Blade Runner on Blu-ray, gorgeous in all its gorgeosity. In 5.1 it sounds incredible too.

    I bought my PS3 for Team Ico’s unnamed-at-the-time game, Heavy Rain (back when it was just a teaser), LittleBig Planet (yes, yes, I know), Dead Space and Motor Storm: Pacific Rift which sort of pushed me off the fence.

  • Toger

    Gregg, oh yes. The surround sound was spectacular. Did I mention my friend’s HDTV is 72″ (obscene, isn’t it)? It’s like being at a high-class theatre: better food, pauses for bathroom breaks and no one talking through the movie.

    Is Trine up on PSN, yet? If so, that might be my tipping point: Last Guardian, Heavy Rain and Trine.

  • Gregg B

    *spits tea out, despite not drinking any*

    O_O

    72″?! I’m speechless. I can only imagine how awesome that is. Size does matter.

    Not so sure about Trine… hang on. I think it is.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I think it is too, Toger. I’ll check.

    To be honest, though, I doubt you’d be disappointed with the purchase even if Trine’s not there yet. I’ve been way happier with my PS3 than with my 360. Demon’s Souls, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted, Folklore, even little games like Flower – I’ve had more concentrated fun with the PS3 than with Microsoft’s console, which tends to gather dust for months between game releases.

    72″???? I thought size didn’t matter!

  • Toger

    Size doesn’t matter. 😀

    In my friend’s defense, it was a great deal: opened box, itty-bitty scratch on the case, not a dead pixel to be seen and it was less $$ than the 60″ he originally wanted.

    Thanks for checking guys. I’ve played a tiny bit of Uncharted, but I’m horrible at the combat. Flower intrigues me. As does Demon’s Souls, but I know that game will crush my soul.

  • Gregg B

    There were certain moments in Flower where it just totally succeeded in conveying a feeling that I can’t say I’ve had in many other games, usually when rushing across a field through the grass or through a canyon or just skimming a pond, but it was never anything to do with collecting bloody petals or fulfilling some rudimentary puzzle. I think my problem with it was that it felt like it was trying to be this deeply emotional piece but in the end there seemed to be too many concessions to being a game rather than just running with the emotive side of the experience. One thing I am sure about though, is the trophies. Don’t get me started on the fucking trophies…

    One of my favourite little games on the PS3 is Everyday Shooter. It’s got a brilliant soundtrack that suits its raw visual style and I love how each level requires a certain tactic or strategy to survive it. It’s a very satisfying game in small bursts.

  • Hanover

    Unfortunately Cage mucked up the ending yet again.  The problem is that the mechanic of the game forced them to have to cheat in order to prevent spoiling the mystery of the game.

    There is also a red herring that makes no sense and is obviously put there to misdirect the player.

    90% of the game is awesome, the last 10% while not as bad as the indigo prophecy, is still sloppy.

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