Разработчик: MC2
Описание
After returning to the quiet streets of Paris to pursue a life of painting, Gus Macpherson could not escape his true art…
The former New York detective finds himself walking the beat once again, when hired by a sensuous woman to investigate the gruesome beheadings of her sister and brother-in-law. In the dark and mysterious streets of Paris and plagued by his clairvoyant sixth sense, Gus will uncover a conspiracy written in blood, with rituals and artifacts as old as time itself.
Key features:
- Stunningly beautiful 360° panoramic views
- Rich and intriguing characters
- Detailed, realistic environment
- Multiple game paths integrated into the story
- Original and creative puzzles
- Prequel to Still Life adventure game
Поддерживаемые языки: english, french, german, italian, polish, spanish - spain
Системные требования
Windows
- Operating system:Windows® XP / Vista™ / Windows® 7
- Processor:1.0 GHz CPU
- Memory:512 GB
- Hard disk space:1GB
- Video:Video Card with 64MB dedicated memory
- Sound:Sound card with DirectX 9.0c support
- DirectX®:9.0c
Отзывы пользователей
I've really tried and I just can't get this god damn game to run
Note to self: Just because a game is super cheap and old, doesn't mean that it is good. 1.6 hours into the game, I've decided not to waste time and just watch it in Youtube.
‘Post Mortem’ is a point'n'click adventure game released in 2002. It tells the story of a former private detective Gus MacPherson who decides to come out of the retirement tempted by the big money offered to him by the mysterious Sophia Blake. She wants MacPherson to solve the mystery of the murder of her sister and brother-in-law, who were brutally killed in their hotel room in Paris. The game is about 6 hours long and on paper everything looks great, as ‘Post Mortem’ offers interesting setting (Paris in the 1920s), intriguing plot and great atmosphere (it's really dark, disturbing and creepy from the very beginning) and a large number of NPCs (and we can have long and detailed conversations with them). Is it as good in practice? The best answer would be: it's complicated.
‘Post Mortem’ allows us to conduct the investigation our way: we can visit and inspect various locations (and there’s quite a lot of them) almost in any order and we can talk to NPCs whenever we want and it depends entirely on us how we approach these conversations (for example, we can admit outright that we are a private detective or we can pretend to be a journalist etc.). Looks great, right? Unfortunately this system (although amazing on paper) does not work AT ALL, because the story can quickly get chaotic and confusing as the game’s engine just doesn't cope with the freedom it offers. For example we can have a long conversation with some NPC about obtaining an item that’s already in our inventory because we decided to visit the location with it first. And it can get even worse, because we can spend few minutes discussing with other NPC what’s the best way to approach certain character while we already did it and we know they’re dead (!!!).
There is a lot of dialogue in "Post Mortem" (which is really cool, because after all we play as a detective, so conversations with witnesses or informants should be a very important element of the game) and as such they are well written, but the aforementioned freedom of approach and the fact that the game does not cope with it mean that many of the dialogues are completely chaotic, unnecessary or simply pointless.
Due to this bad design decision the plot can quickly become a mess and it’s a pity, because the story told in the game is actually really good: the seemingly ordinary investigation quickly becomes truly intriguing as it turns out that the victims had their secrets and there was very specific reason why they were in Paris. We also find out that some people are talking about the mysterious "scam of the century" and some very shady characters (including the famous psychiatrist or the local fence) may be somehow involved in the case. Moreover, there’s some cryptic brotherhood lurking in the background and our protagonist quickly begins to wonder what Sophia Blake is hiding from him. So there's a lot going on and what’s important, in theory it all makes sense. In practice however, due to the problems I described earlier it can be really messy and chaotic, but somehow the overall atmosphere remains simply fantastic all the time.
The key elements of any point’n’click game are the puzzles and in the case of ‘Post Mortem’ there’s no simple answer if they are good or bad. Some of them are really interesting as they require some analysis of the information we’ve found while others are simply annoying and sometimes just dumb, because they seem to be completely random. The solution does not require us to use our brains or to have any knowledge, but simply to be lucky enough to guess the way it was designed by the developers (the fresco or the lockpick puzzles are the best examples) and this is definitely not the way it should work in the point’n’click game.
Unfortunately 'Post Mortem' can also be quite buggy: sometimes it's impossible to read the documents or the notes we found because their text simply disappear and it's not a something to overlook as some of these documents are crucial to the story. And there's also a bigger problem: if we are unlucky we can find ourselves in a dead-end because the game allows us to pick up certain item in certain moment when it shouldn't be possible yet. So remember to save often!
Few words about the technical stuff:
Let's start with the graphics - ‘Post Mortem’ is a game from 2002 and well… It simply looks like the game from 2002. Personally, I am the type of player who doesn’t care about it as long as the gameplay and story are fun (for me high quality graphics are basically nothing but a nice addition to the game), but I can can totally imagine a lot players (especially the younger ones) saying that ‘Post Mortem’ is quite ugly. What’s important though, there’s no problem at all with locating objects on the screen, so no complains on my end.
The music is nice and it fits the setting and the atmosphere of the story, but there’s one small problem with it: there are literally just 4 songs in the game, so unfortunately they quickly become repetitive.
The interface simply is not good and I am not comparing it to today's games, but other adventure point’n’click titles from about 2002. Unfortunately it's really clunky (especially when we have a lot of items in the inventory) and even the simplest things like saving the game or browsing the documents we found require way too many clicks.
The game worked like a charm in my case (and that’s not obvious when it comes to modern hardware and games from early years of this century), but according to some reviews here and many threads on the game's Steam forum other players are not so lucky. I had no issues with the game whatsover, but obviously I can't guarantee it'd be the same for everybody else. The other things worth mentioning are that we can save the game anytime we want, the dialogues are unskippable and 'Post Mortem' doesn't like alt-tabbing (it's causing the game to freeze, but it doesn't happen in any other circumstances so I'm not considering it as an issue).
To sum up: do I recommend this game? Like I said in the beginning – it’s complicated. ‘Post Mortem’ is a perfect example that ‘more’ doesn't necessarily mean ‘better’, but IMHO the story really makes up for the issues described in this review and I enjoyed the game. Have in mind though, that I’m a life-long point’n’click adventure games fan, so I’m used to clunky interfaces, ridiculous puzzles and stupid design decisions. But if you are not a hardcore fan of the genre and you’re just looking for a cool detective game then you can totally skip this one and look for something else.
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TL;DR? Here’s the short version:
Pros:
+ Really dark and creepy atmosphere
+ Very intriguing story and well written dialogues (in general; more on that later)
+ Manual saving system
+ Works like a charm
+ Some puzzles are pretty cool
Cons:
- While others absolutely suck (the fresco...)
- Soundtrack quickly gets very repetitive
- Dialogue system and the 'open' world don’t work together (dialogues become confusing and in some cases they just stop making any sense)
- Bugs, bugs, bugs
- Clunky interface
Do I recommend this game? If you’re a life long point’n’click adventure games fan (like me), then yes, I do, because the core of the story is really cool and the atmosphere is great. But if you’re just looking for some cool detective game, then you should skip this one and pick something else.
Okay, listen, umm.. this is not as I don't like this game, buuut.. I guess, too much time passed after the last play. And it was cool back then. I loved this game deeply. All this creepy atmosphere, all dialogues, being scared about the ending (since there is a bad one), all these animations, dark tone of locations.. And I felt it, for some time! In first 20-30 mins. Then, everything is gone.
First, it doesn't want to work properly, I got some bugs, and I was irritated by some music, that put me off and was absolutely unnecessary. I had a bug with the candle and it put me on edge, I ended the game being very angry, because nothing worked and I had to use someone's save file.
If we talk about good stuff - atmosphere, music (usual music), animations, characters (mannequins are not included) and story are still very good. If not for that stupid bug, I'd enjoyed the game. It was one of my first horrors and one of the quests I found easy to finish.
If you like this game and want to try it (I'd advise you to do it, maybe this bug is only for me), there are some "not cool features" - you cannot quit dialogue window normally, if you changed your mind and didn't want to speak with a person yet. You cannot pass any dialogue, even if you saw it a million times. If you failed some quest, you wouldn't understand it. If something was broken - you wouldn't understand it. ONLY if you know what to do and what should happen at some points.
So, I am in the middle now. I want to recommend it, but I cannot. I am sorry, but I care about your safety.
My playthrough - https://youtu.be/mWCDChPDYJQ
(be aware that I used the savefile from web in the second part).
Post Mortem is a point & click adventure game that attempts to weave a twisted tale centered around an occult item known as the Head of Baphomet. Unfortunately, despite its intriguing premise, the game falls flat in its execution. Unlike the brilliantly crafted Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, Post Mortem comes across as a lackluster Knights Templar fan fiction.
The developers clearly aimed to create a narrative with multiple paths, hoping to tie them together cohesively by the end. However, they missed the mark entirely, resulting in a confusing mess where the dialogue sometimes makes little to no sense. It seems that in their next game, Still Life, they overcorrected by removing almost all player choice, leaving me to wonder if they found a better balance in Still Life 2.
The puzzles in Post Mortem are another major frustration. They’re often difficult and obscure, serving more to block progress than to engage the player. If you decide to tackle this game, I highly recommend keeping a walkthrough handy to avoid endless frustration.
Moreover, if you plan to play Post Mortem on a modern PC running Windows 11, be prepared to use a 3rd party tool like DXWind to make the game playable.
In the end, Post Mortem is a game that might appeal to die-hard fans of the genre, but for most players, it’s likely to be a frustrating and confusing experience.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | MC2 |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 15.01.2025 |
| Metacritic | 71 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 48% положительных (155) |