Laura Bow: Colonel's Bequest vs. Dagger of Amon Ra

[KatieHal]

This game's excellence may have partially been lost on me since while I was in the middle of playing (literally, sitting there, playing the game when this happened, SOMEONE (Rich!) told me whodunnit far before I got to the end.

I do love the atmosphere of the game, though, highly agreed there. Seeing that done in higher res graphics would be awesome.

[Damar]

I think Colonel's Bequest is a better game all around because it has a mystery that makes sense.  There were some things I didn't like about the game.  First off was the parser.  Normally I like parsers, but in a game so dialogue driven, typing everything out felt like a chore.  Honestly, I think it's because I sometimes have trouble remembering names.  So the fact that most of the typing would involve "Ask about so and so" grated on me.  And god forbid there was more than one person in the room because then you had to specify "ask so and so about so and so."  I was able to do it, but it wasn't as much fun for me.  That's a personal thing, though.  The other issue I had with Colonel's Bequest was the fact that unless you figured out the mystery in no uncertain terms in-game, it wouldn't let you win.  I got through the game without finding all the hidden clues, yet at the end I was still able to put two and two together and figure out who the bad guy was.  Yet when it came time to shoot the bad guy, it wouldn't let me because I shouldn't know for sure.  It was pretty clear to me that so and so was the bad guy, but the game didn't like my deductive reasoning.  It wanted to make sure that it had told me who the bad guy was, otherwise I was doomed to have the bad ending.

Amon Ra was more streamlined but it wasn't a great game.  The journal, while easier to use for me than the parser, was still clunky and made for a very, very long game, especially when you had that room full of people in the museum and the option to ask them all about everything.  I also found a lot of the characters pretty racist.  They were just complete caricatures.  (Though to be fair, the cook in Colonel's Bequest made me uncomfortable for that exact same reason.  But at least there, for better or worse, the game was mimicking dramatic portrayals of the time (1920s and on) whereas Amon Ra was playing it up for laughs.  I mean, Lo Fat did everything but put pee-pee in your coke.  I guess the writers thought they were showing restraint by not including that.)

The other thing about Amon Ra was that the mystery was convoluted and made no sense.  The killer's motivations seemed confused and bizarre.  [spoiler]Was he overly focused on dispensing justice, like when he killed Ziggy, or was he a corrupt blackmailer involved with the art stealing ring, or was he just a jealous psycho like when he killed Yvette?[/spoiler]  Nothing seemed to fit with the murderer's character.  In fact, I figured out who did it when I found the grapes next to the snakebite victim, but I just couldn't believe that 1) the writers would have left such an obvious clue and 2) that the murders fit in at all with what we saw of this character before.  They mystery in Colonel's Bequest was a basic mystery, but it made sense.  Amon Ra seemed like the writers just wanted to kill as many characters as possible, put in as many crimes as possible, and then realized that they had to identify the murderer so they just tagged it on someone.  Oh, and the fact that Laura actually unmasks the killer (without you seeing) yet you can still get the inquest wrong drove me crazy!  How stupid is Laura?  And that also robs you of any closure in the story.  Best case scenario, you get the game to say, "Yep, that was the killer!"  It was just ridiculous.  Added to that, the feel of the game was just odd.  It couldn't decide whether it wanted to be slapstick, comedy, or gritty drama.  I think they wanted to soften the decapitation and murders with goofy humor, but it only succeeded in making the game feel incredibly uneven and inappropriate.

Despite all that, it wasn't a terribly unplayable game for me.  I just wouldn't really ever play it again.