Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun Review

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Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun

Review by Old RoosterOctober 2007

“I Will Tell You a Story So Vividly That You Think You Are There Yourself” —Poirot to Hastings

It’s the fall of 1940. Agatha Christie’s famed detective, Hercule Poirot, decides to regenerate his little grey cells with a holiday on a resort island just off the coast of England. Of course, much like other famed sleuths, you can be sure that crime will follow. Soon after his arrival, Poirot senses “sexual tension” in the air and fears that a “crime of passion” may well be soon in the offing.

However, not only is the story itself full of surprises, but the telling of it takes a most unusual turn. The game begins with Poirot’s holiday having been completed! The crime(s) are over and solved. From his London office, Poirot challenges Hastings to reflect back to his days on the island, walk in his footsteps, and see if he can piece together sufficient clues from observation, conversations, and puzzle-solving to arrive at the same correct solution as did the self-described brilliant Belgian detective. But this isn’t just an abstract office task. The game takes you back to the beginning of the island visit, literally walking in the shoes of Poirot.

In other words, you play as Hastings playing as Poirot.

This science fiction–like time or mind travel is a gimmick, but one that is fun and works well. I suppose the developers could have had Hastings actually accompany Poirot, but the end result is rather the same. In effect you play in real time, and the island characters see and hear you as Poirot. Of course, sometimes you slip and say quite un-Poirot–like things, such as, “Where is the nearest golf course,” or “Why not wade out to the raft.” Your inner dialogue with Poirot is much like it would be if he were actually there, with the detective giving you immediate responses. “Hastings, you know I do not play the golf.” It seems strange to write about, but it works.

“Hands off Me Tools” —Mechanic to Poirot

Evil Under the Sun is the third in the Adventure Company’s current Christie series and the best by far. From graphics to gameplay, improvements are evident, particularly as compared with Murder on the Orient Express.

Playing in third-person, point-and-click, adventure format, Poirot has considerable freedom of movement around the island, hotel, and nearby town. Indeed, the game is not at all “on rails” and offers flexible paths and sequences to move the story along. There are eight acts, and certain tasks (conversations, inventory accumulation, errands) do need to be accomplished before one can move from one act to another. However, within each act, there is a good deal of fluidity.

Technically, EUTS is outstanding. It installs from three CDs and will run without a CD in the drive. On my new Vista PC with a 24-inch monitor, it looked stunning on the full screen and ran flawlessly without a crash, glitch, or bug the entire game.

A top-of-screen dropdown task bar couldn’t be easier to use. With five sections, we find access to the main menu (save, load, options), a picture trigger to play as Poirot on the island or Hastings getting hints in Poirot’s office, classic inventory, notebook that automatically records instructions (to-do list), stopwatch timings, suspects, and documents, and, finally, a stopwatch section to use for actual timings (could the suspect have gotten to the murder site in that amount of time?).

Of course, as with most adventure titles, Poirot picks up enough stuff to make one think he has a U-Haul with him. Rocks, fenceposts, oars, bottles, and pills—all at once!—pose no impediment for him. This is a suspension of disbelief common with most games, even shooters—how can the protagonist carry all of those weapons at one time? The other rather comical aspect here is that this light-fingered approach, bordering on thievery and certainly rudeness, is never criticized by anyone except the mechanic who caught Poirot messing with his tools, at least the first time. But that’s okay—you never know when you might need a bottle of detergent!

Other technical features are solid. You can save anywhere, skip through conversations quickly (but don’t!), double-click on Poirot to move him rapidly. Load times are fast, allowing ease of movement around the island and back to Poirot’s office for hints. The large mouse cursor, with clear depictions of its various uses (open, converse, listen secretly, act with inventory, etc.) couldn’t be easier to use. A rather overdone and often unnecessary hint system is in place, allowing you to get hints back at Poirot’s office and even use a peculiar “Finger of Suspicion” to help narrow down suspects. But with the ongoing prodding from Poirot in Hastings’s mind, I didn’t need this much.

“Sometimes, the Small Crimes Are but Appetizers to the Main Course” —Poirot

Atmosphere and mood are among the high points in Evil Under the Sun. War has broken out, the island and town are emptying of citizens, and there is a palpable sense of anxiety, depression, even disquiet in the air. The entire work of the game contributes to a sense of foreboding. From the extraordinary writing to the fine graphics to the haunting background themes, one gets caught up in this period setting.

By standards of such games as Bioshock, EUTS’s graphics are certainly dated. Yet, as mentioned, I found the artwork, attention to period detail, and small touches most appealing. When visiting one of the coves, you see and hear the waves gently lapping the shoreline, see grey clouds moving across the sky, and detect a gentle breeze and the occasional seagull. The only criticism I might have here is that you can’t pan within a scene but must move Poirot to open another section.

Particular attention has been paid to facial animations, expressions, lip-synching. The roll of eyes, frowns, sideways glances in conversations all contribute to the believability of the characters and are revealing above and beyond what is literally said.

Relatedly, voice acting is a paramount feature of EUTS. A stand-in for David Suchet (TV’s Poirot) was found who sounds 95% like him. The entire cast is clearly professional and does outstanding work. Perhaps it helps when they have such an exemplary script.

“I’m Not One to Gossip, But …” Bartender

Evil Under the Sun is about a crime and the solving of it to be sure. But you’ll meet a memorable mix of 20 characters, almost all of whom have secrets, dark places, current tensions. There’s Gladys, the tearful maid (perhaps because Poirot lifted several things from her cart?); Rosamund, a preoccupied dressmaker; Arlena, an arrogant and threatened actress; Stephan, a former vicar with a tortured soul; and others with gambling problems, divided loyalties, marital tensions.

I advise again not to blithely skip through conversations. You need to get to know these folks and their peculiarities. What I remember at the end of the game is not simply the crime and solving of it, but more so the people I met along the way. Indeed, this is more the case with EUTS than with any game I can recall.

Of course, among the cast are Poirot and Hastings. The schizophrenic-type conversations Poirot/Hastings has with himself often provide comic relief as well as hints. Hastings as Poirot is often reminded by his mental Poirot of not doing things in this body such as wading and playing golf. At one point, after expressing some unsureness about a particular matter, Poirot gently reprimands Hastings/Poirot: “You may have reason to be modest, Hastings; I do not.”

Characters can disappear, at least for a while. One of the techniques the developers use within an act is to have a character stick around an overlook, for example, if you will soon need to revisit him/her. If the person is gone, that suggests you’re done with him/her, at least for the time being. At first, this puzzled me a bit, but I later found it to be a useful way to progress in the story, particularly with the relative open-endedness provided.

Finally, I won’t say anything about the crime, except to say it’s different enough from the book/film that you won’t feel you know the outcome. I can say you’ll appreciate and enjoy the mystery!

“The Sun Shines, the Sea Is Blue, but There Is Evil Everywhere Under the Sun” —Poirot

In his recent review of Gone Baby Gone, Roger Ebert comments that, “One reason crime movies tend to be intrinsically interesting is that the supporting characters have to be riveting.”

Evil Under the Sun succeeds in no small measure because most of the 20 characters are many-layered, burdened, secretive, tortured, perhaps even evil. More than either of the two fine previous Christie games, or almost any game I can think of (with the possible exception of Gilbert’s extraordinary Blackwell series), EUTS reveals the depths and darkness of its cast. Some may think of the game as slow and plodding. But there is a deliberate, gradualized design that increases the suspense in a gripping way. In best Christie fashion, the game is like a good book you can’t put down.

With a compelling narrative, intriguing setting, stellar acting, and gorgeous graphics and character animations, Evil Under the Sun is one of the two finest detective/adventure games I’ve ever played—the other being Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. It is extremely well-constructed in terms of playability. There are gimmicks to be sure—playing as Hastings playing as Poirot and the silly Finger of Suspicion—but these are minor. Puzzles are largely inventory-based and nicely enmeshed within the context of the narrative. But what makes Evil Under the Sun remarkable is not only the fine story, but, primarily, the exploration of the foibles, twists, and surprises from these colorful characters. Evil Under the Sun is more about people than puzzles. This isn’t a game to be “beaten;” rather, it’s a journey to be savored, reflected upon, remembered. Simply put, when all is said and done, the one feature that makes Evil Under the Sun really stand out is the writing, and that is primarily why it comes most highly recommended.

What I Liked Most About Evil Under the Sun

  • A suspenseful, involving plot, sufficiently different from the book;
  • Engrossing atmosphere—the island and WWII;
  • Marvelously developed characters;
  • Fine hint system, with shadowing (eavesdropping) very neat;
  • Entertaining banter between Poirot and Hastings;
  • Lovely graphics, particularly facial animations;
  • Great voice acting from Suchet’s stand-in, Hastings, and the rest;
  • Relative freedom of progression, though not completely open-ended;
  • Sensible, inventory-based puzzles.

What Bothered Me Just a Bit

  • Though fine, the musical themes become redundant;
  • Starts seemingly slow, requires patience;
  • Can’t pan within a specific scene. The End

 

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: AWE Productions Publisher: The Adventure Company Release Date: October 2007

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Windows 2000/XP 1.4 GHz Pentium 3 processor 256 MB RAM 1.5 GB free disk space 16× CD/DVD-ROM drive 64 MB DirectX 9 compatible video card

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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16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

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