By gremlinWhat is it?Let me say right from thestart, I hated EVIDENCE: The Last Ritual almost from the firstmoment I started playing it. Okay, that’s the conclusion written. Now Ihave to tell you why.First of all the simplefacts: EVIDENCE: The Last Ritual (just Evidence from now on)is presented in what looks like a police forensic evidence bag, containinga large multi-compact-disc case. It's labeled to look like it's evidencecollected by the New York Police Department for the FBI, but is actuallypublished by The Adventure Company, having been developed by Lexis Numerique.The box contains four CDs: three installation discs and one play disc. Themanual is a PDF on Disc 1, which is also the play disc.Is therea plot?The story of Evidencerevolves around a serial murderer called the Phoenix, who was firstbrought to the public attention through Missing: Since January.This time he's (assuming the Phoenix is a 'he') killing people for somesort of ritualistic purpose. He's not a shy sort, this Phoenix.
How do you describe a game that isnt really a game but is one part brain teaser and one part horror/suspense thriller? Well maybe I just did.
The CDs ofthe game are from him and they contain videos of two teams investigatingtwo different cases: one of gruesome murders, and one of a missing person.However, access to these videos is controlled through a complex series ofpuzzles.How doyou play?The game launches in a fullscreen view, dominated by black. Technically, Evidence appears tohave been written in Flash. This has the serious advantage that you canalt-tab back and forth to the game with ease, with no risk of it causingthe sorts of crashes so often seen in more complex 3D games. Of coursethis is just as well, because you’ll be doing this a great deal during thecourse of play.The first stage of play is toregister yourself with the ICPA ( InternationalCommittee for the Phoenix Arrest )via the User EmailManagement screen, from which point onwards you’ll receive numerous emails(I counted 128, but there could be more) containing so-called ‘hints,’comments on your progress, and, most annoying of all, the ‘where are you?’emails. If I want to play your game, Lexis Numerique, I’ll play itwhen I want to, not when you beg me and try to guilt-trip me into playing.Now get the heck out of my Inbox!Sorry, a bit of venomoverflow there.The first email you’llreceive is actually useful – it contains your password to play, withoutwhich you cannot proceed. So, obviously, you should use a real emailaddress, not that [email protected] bogus email address you’vebeen using on all those new site registrations!Right.
Now we’re in, this iswhere it starts getting tricky (a word here that means as frustrating asfeeding pills to cats. Hint: try Googling ‘ Howto give a cat a pill’ ).
Don’t worry, Googleis your friend, Google has the answers, bookmark Google, you’re gonna needit! Apologies to those who don’t use Google as their search engine ofchoice already, but you’ll probably have to get used to it for a while, asI don’t know if any of the other search engines of note have quite thesame coverage of the sites you’ll need.The puzzles are arranged inlevels, each one containing four or five puzzles named for the Egyptianastrological ‘Decans.’ Some of the puzzles are also divided intosub-puzzles. The menu screen for each level has a fuzzy animation in themiddle, and four or five squares moving quite rapidly up and down theright-hand side of the screen. At this point I shall bring up another areaof frustration with this game: mouse control.Evidenceis largely mouse controlled, so although puzzle solutions are often typedinto text boxes on-screen, you’ll often be chasing small moving objectson-screen with the mouse pointer.
You need the eyesight of atwelve-year-old and the mouse control of a cat to keep up. Despiteappearing to be a research/puzzle quest, the level of hand-eyecoordination (not to mention visual and aural acuity) required for thisgame puts this on a par with some first-person shooters! Definitely notone for anyone using the accessibility features of Windows.Early in the game, puzzlesolutions are usually the result of user action in solving the on-screenconundrum, but as the game progresses, the on-screen material onlyprovides clues as to the correct answer. Many of the puzzles can only besolved by taking those clues from the game, and from the emails, andsearching for answers on the Internet.
This opens its own can of worms interms of frustration, of course. If you’ve gleaned only part of the cluesfrom the game (including the content of the videos opened by variouspuzzles), then you’re in for a whole heap of frustration searching throughevery piece of theconspiracy-theory-laden, suppressed-hidden-meaning claptrap that goes withthe modern 'study' (or perhaps that's 'fiction') about the European MiddleAges.Character InteractionThis game purports to makeyou part of an international effort to hunt down a serial killer. This isso anti-procedural as to make a joke of the whole thing. At no point doany of the investigators come across as competent or intelligent. In factthey’re so bad that they don’t even appear to consider trying to trackmovements of victims and suspects through the travel companies, airportsand ferry ports, with their modern security checks.The characters with which youinteract are brought to you through email.
In fact, the ICPA website evengoes as far as to suggest that you’re part of an Internet community. Thismight be the case, though I never tried to partake. The unfortunate resultof the setup is that some of the emails read like people that want to befriends with you. This is a very confusing and concerning use of theInternet – there is no telling what sort of impact this kind ofpersonalization of such a psychologically ambiguous experience could haveon someone with real-life/net-life balance issues.OdditiesGiven my comments up to now,you’re probably expecting me to have another rant about how frustratingEvidence is. Well, not just yet; that’s in the conclusions below. Fornow, I will content myself by commenting on some of the positive featuresof the game.Yes, there are some, and inthe context of this review they qualify as Oddities!Technically, this is a verywell constructed game. It was bulletproof in terms of reliability and lackof glitches, even on my not-so-high-spec laptop.
The music wasatmospheric, the sound effects suitably grating and dark. The imagery wascertainly effective in setting a frightening tone.
That Phoenix is onesick individual. Please note at this point, that Evidence is ratedMature, and they mean it! There are gory murder scenes, scenes of thesimulated results of torture, and plenty of generally threateningunpleasantness from the Phoenix himself in the form of emails.ConclusionsEVIDENCE: The Last Ritualis a game. Did you get that? No more, no less.
It doesn’tinstall root-kit software on your PC. It doesn’t make you part of aninternational crime solving network. There are no real downloadableadditions or hacking tools involved. It isfiction.As for a grade? I’m not going to grade this one because,in technical terms, Evidence is well executed and bug free, as faras I can tell. That makes it a high quality product.
But there is no way Ican award more than a D for a game that I absolutely hated playing.