By Kieron Gillen on October 28th, 2009 at 5:08 pm.
Er… by which, I don’t mean giving a sort of guide to what it’s like to date Agatha Christie. But… well, I saw there was a demo of Agatha Christie: Dead Man’s Folly. Being unfamiliar with period detective dramas, I realised it was time to call in an expert to see whether it lived up to the legacy of mustachioed Belgians. Hence, I turned once again to expert Christie-ian, Delightful Girlfriend who spent some time with the game. And then I interviewed her on what she made of it. Find the results below…
RPS: Hullo!
Delightful Girlfriend: It’s not a game! It’s like being shown pictures of the same rooms over and over and being asked to click on stupid items. Why is there a parrot in the dining room?
RPS: Maybe it’s been invited for dinner?
Delightful Girlfriend: A painter’s palette stuck in the middle of a painting on the wall. A pair of scissors roped into the middle of decorative bunting. And no discernible reason why you have to find those objects at all. Just “click on these things please”. Interspersed with “bonus rounds” which involve a sort of “fill the gaps” hangman game and some “rearrange these scraps into a picture”. These are the games for Poirot’s brain-challenged tagalong helper Hastings, not the great man himself. Rubbish.
RPS: Hmm. It sounds it. Perhaps we should rewind a little – what makes you such an Agatha Christie expert?
Delightful Girlfriend: Having read all the books (several times) as a child. Having watched (now a lazy adult) the majority of the adaptations on ITV3 (yes – even the shitty one hour ones based on short stories which are more about making the audience laugh at Poirot eating fish and chips than they area about plot – fucking ITV). Having even played that And Then There Were None PC/Wii game a couple of years ago despite it also being SHIT. Although at least it was point and click ADVENTURE not just point and click on SHIT.
RPS: Hmm.
Delightful Girlfriend: This is not the kind of useful commentary you were after is it?
RPS: Oh, I dunno. You sound a lot like Walker. This is what he does all day when talking about the descent of the genre. Anyway – have you ever dressed up as Poirot?
Delightful Girlfriend: Er… no.
RPS: Would you want to?
Delightful Girlfriend: Would you like to talk about the game?
RPS: If I asked you to dress up as a sexy Poirot, would you?
Delightful Girlfriend: Define, in precise terms, what a “sexy” Poirot would wear?
RPS: The hat and… a sexy moustache?
Delightful Girlfriend: You want me to wear a moustache?
RPS: …maybe?
Delightful Girlfriend: I’d rather dress up as Miss Marple. She has life experience. I get the vague impression that Poirot’s still a virgin.
RPS: Oh, please. That chubby Belgian’s a smoothie.
Delightful Girlfriend: He goes after all the young ladies. But he’s very noble. Wouldn’t be one for a quick grope in the butler’s pantry.
RPS: Anyway! So if I get this right… the game is basically you presented with a room, and you clicking on everytrhing in the room until you find all the clues. And then you go onto the next level? Yes?
Delightful Girlfriend: No no – the objects aren’t even clues! You’re in a room. You have a list of gibberish. You click on the gibberish. At the end, you have a clue to “decode” to tell you which other gibberish object to click on. (hangman game). Then you go onto next level, where you’re presented with different rooms AS WELL AS THE ONE YOU’VE JUST BEEN IN JUST LOOKING FOR DIFFERENT OBJECTS THIS TIME.
RPS: Hmm.
Delightful Girlfriend: That said, in the demo you’re not even presented with the murder yet – though from the format I think it’s unlikely to change dramatically the further the story goes on.
RPS: You really sound like Walker now. Anyway – Did this happen in the original book? Obsessive compulsive Poirot wandering the place and prodding?
Delightful Girlfriend: Occasionally a segment of plot flashes up on your screen, but it’s like as a reward for your “hunting”, so you don’t actually take part in the game/murder at all. You just click on parrots/umbrellas/dice/sugarbowls. And there’s no parrot-poking in the book at all, at least that I can recall.
RPS: Hmm. I think you’d recall a parrot being prodded. This does sound rubbish.
Delightful Girlfriend: Oh – and it’s very American. I had to go to hints to figure out what a birdie was. Do you know what a birdie is? DON’T GOOGLE – ANSWER ME NOW! DAMN YOU!
RPS: A score in golf?
Delightful Girlfriend: It’s a fucking shuttlecock. For badminton.
RPS: That’s not cricket
Delightful Girlfriend: It’s also not meant to be in the fucking dining room.
RPS: Maybe the parrot brought it. Okay – I think we have a picture of this now. One final question… what did you make of the rendered Poirot? He looks sinister.
Delightful Girlfriend: Oh. You mean “Poirot”. Not parrot or “porriorrrt” or whatever the hell you typed. Yeah. He’s quite the freak.
RPS: I will correct all the spelling afterwards, and then you’ll look the fool. Oh yes.
Delightful Girlfriend: Have we just msn-ed ourselves into some kind of sexy Poirot vs Marple cosplay?
RPS: I certainly hope so
Delightful Girlfriend: Well that’s the weekend plans taken care of then. Excellent… wait. You’re going to correct spelling?
RPS: I’ll give it a shot
Delightful Girlfriend: Hm. Good luck.
RPS: Thanks for your time.
28/10/2009 at 17:24 Tei says:
Humm… lucky b..
Maybe this games are not target at casuals anymore, but at casuals PET’s. I totally see a Parrot playing a game where you have to poke at random thing aimlessly for a small nudget of cookie.
Is the parrot dead?
28/10/2009 at 17:29 Pantsman says:
So…click on stuff it tells you to until you get to play hangman?
I might have to pick this up.
28/10/2009 at 17:30 Ian says:
So Gillen fancies Poirot.
28/10/2009 at 17:50 skizelo says:
Gillen fancies well-kept moustaches.
Also, people should totally get on making a Christie game with most of the mechanics stolen from Hitman.
You’ll always get caught, obv, but you’d get points for how long you stayed free. And how many headaches you gave the detective.
28/10/2009 at 18:09 Garg says:
And John Walker, apparently.
29/10/2009 at 00:59 qrter says:
Exactly – he fancies John Walker, found a girl who sounds just like him. Much more disturbing.
28/10/2009 at 17:43 Lack_26 says:
Best review of a demo ever, why hasn’t she been given a job at a gaming magazine yet (If she has, I look quite the fool).
28/10/2009 at 17:46 Fede says:
Horray for the second “Delightful Girlfriend” tag entry!
28/10/2009 at 17:47 Dr.Evanzan says:
No, it's just resting.
28/10/2009 at 19:19 Mil says:
Well played, sir.
28/10/2009 at 17:47 heroic zero says:
I’d like to see someone come up with a game titled “Agatha Christie’s Girlfriend.”
Oh, and make it involve zombies.
28/10/2009 at 17:50 The_B says:
I think we have glimpsed too far into the looking glass of Kieron & Delightful Girlfriend’s relationship. AND IT CAN NEVER BE UNSEEN.
28/10/2009 at 17:54 GriddleOctopus says:
She did used to work on a games magazine… but I think we can say no more for fear of giving away her identity to the RPS Stalkotron 2000.
28/10/2009 at 18:24 Man Raised By Puffins says:
So that’s what happened to Kate Little!
Also:
I thought John liked hidden object games?
28/10/2009 at 18:26 Jim Rossignol says:
Actually Little moved away and is now a farmer.
28/10/2009 at 21:29 Rei Onryou says:
So that’s what happened to Kate Little!
28/10/2009 at 17:54 The_B says:
Also sexy Poirot and Miss Marple cosplay eh?
Peter Serafinowicz as Kieron Gillen. It somehow fits.
28/10/2009 at 18:05 Heliocentric says:
Spoiler warning: Delightful girlfriend is John Walker.
28/10/2009 at 20:07 The_B says:
RPS is a little known place where, we can get togetheeeeeeerrrr!
28/10/2009 at 18:19 Darthy says:
The fish-and-chip-one was on ITV3 last night.
28/10/2009 at 18:39 JonFitt says:
I think this sounds like another game that some relatives of mine were playing. it is probably from the same stable.
It wasn’t an adventure or mystery in any sense that you’d recognise, it was basically a Where’s Wally (Waldo) type affair with stuff hidden in a picture. I think you had to find the objects against the clock.
Some closer inspection leads me to believe it’s a genre:
http://www.shinegame.com/games/hidden-object-games.html
Not my cup of tea, and probably a let down for someone familiar with conventional adventure games, but some people do like them.
28/10/2009 at 18:46 Dante says:
David Suchet pretty much is Poirot as far as I’m concerned.
28/10/2009 at 19:58 LionsPhil says:
@Dante: This I grant, yet do not undervalue the performances of Peter Ustinov.
28/10/2009 at 19:31 LionsPhil says:
Thank you, Delightful Girlfriend, for berating this idiotic abuse of the term “adventure”.
Although “click on all the random crap” is still closer to adventures than the stuff marketroids will stretch the term too. Tomb Raider is set in exotic locales, so it’s an adventure, yay!
28/10/2009 at 20:20 ID says:
I think you could make a whole series of games out of Agatha Christie Girlfriend.
Erotic games.
28/10/2009 at 20:22 ID says:
“Agatha Christie Girlfriend” would make for an awesome game. An awesome series of games, in fact. No — an awesome series of erotic games!
Or maybe it should be a sim game. You know, to give people a sense of what it would really be like to have Agatha Christie as your girlfriend.
28/10/2009 at 21:03 Martin K says:
I should like to point out that this sort of horrid pointy-clicky-screeny nonsense is most often reviewed on JayIsGames, and a collective blight on the landscape they are, too (the games, anyway; Jay’s quite a nice chap…almost, suspiciously nice).
28/10/2009 at 21:35 Rei Onryou says:
I’m glad that we have more Delightful Girlfriend entries (she is rather delightful). I’m not sure if I’m glad about the Poirot fantasies though.
Kieron does seem to have a moustache fetish. I reckon this leads to this and ends up leading into this…
28/10/2009 at 22:20 PleasingFungus says:
God, Rei, why?
Very amusing interview, though. Well worth my money.
28/10/2009 at 22:38 Spacewalk says:
I enjoyed reading this more than playing the game.
P.S. I have not played the game.
29/10/2009 at 05:12 Anonymousity says:
Well The one thing I learned from this interview is that keiron’s girlfriend is funnier than him hooray.
29/10/2009 at 07:14 Owen says:
Does this make Mr Rossignol, Jim Bergerac? I think he has that ‘way’ about him…
:p
29/10/2009 at 09:31 Eidolon says:
She reminds me more of Charlie Brooker than John Walker. I don’t know which is more disturbing. Then again, a love child between Gillen and Brooker would be the Muad’dib of game journalism.
30/10/2009 at 09:12 Paul S says:
If you type without rhythm you won’t attract Worms.
29/10/2009 at 11:33 bakaohki says:
“Delightful Girlfriend:” may be abbreviated “DG:”; you’re welcome.
02/11/2009 at 12:16 KindredPhantom says:
*Shakes Head and walks away*