Game 148 - Hector: Badge of Carnage - Week X - July 24

ector: Badge of Carnage immediately reminded me why I hate adventure puzzle games. First section wasn't too bad but when it opens up and you have multiple areas to go between, with no clue where to start, non-obvious backtracking and random items to be used in each area, it certainly drives that dislike I have home. The very obscure “you have to use the paint with the toothbrush and give it to the monkey” isn’t really here thankfully. I just don’t have the patience for these types of games. If you don’t have a good bearing you can find yourself hitting a wall, backtracking through areas and click everything and using all your items on every pixel as you go. Hector is wise enough to have an extensive layered hint system full immersed into the game. It begins with Detective Hector asking his partner for a hint which is vague at best; this goes to the next level of a more implicit hint; beyond this you can go to a clear step by step instruction with no nonsense. If it wasn’t for this I wouldn’t have made it through all 8 hours of Hector and it would have found itself to be the game in a while that received the “content” status in 30 minutes. Aside from my dislike for the genre the game as absolutely excellent. The game appeals to a generation who grew up with these adventure games for children, recognising its audience it instead takes on a mature setting full of blood and bodies with a British comedic undertone and plenty of gratuity. The setting is perfect for a funny mystery murder story, a downtrodden town in the UK with all the characters you’d expect. From cockney bogans to Scottish drunks and dim-witted criminals and police alike. The game pokes fun at everyone alike, young, old, police and all walks. All the characters are superbly voiced with special shot out to Hector, Lambert and the villain of the whodunit Barnsley. Hector as a lazy sinful slob of a Detective, reminiscent of stereotypically 80s sitcom dads and full of punchlines. Lambert is his buffoon of a partner who you often control. Barnsley is a down on his luck tourism planner, jaded by how destitute the town is and orchestrating the terrorist attack on the town. It all fits very well and the writing is very clever, enough so to make me want to see it out and follow the story to its end. I thought this was made by Telltale, but I was surprised to find out they only published it and instead it was made by the one-time developer Straandlooper. A shame as they clearly had talent.