It's 1914, and your friend Tyler has summoned you to join him on a transcontinental train departing from Paris. Hitches in your reunion plans begin when you're late to the station and have to board by running alongside with a motorcycle and hopping on, unticketed. But then your trouble worsens when you discover your friend has been murdered in his compartment. Think fast - somebody is a killer, and you've got precious few minutes before a snoopy clerk finds you alone with the body and you get 20-to-life.
The Last Express is an animated mystery game with several hooks. First, the story takes place aboard a classic Orient Express-style train, with no room to maneuver and many, many rooms in which a murderer can hide. Not knowing what or who lies behind any door keeps you on teeth-grinding edge.
Second, Broderbund eschews clinical polygons or cheesy full-motion video in favor of hand-drawn period animation. The alternating first-, second-, and third-person points of view imbue scenes with a lifelikeness both elegant and creepy. Passengers murmur conversations, watching you with unreadable expressions; conductors walk briskly up to you, sticking their faces right up to yours, only to say "Excuse me" and continue on their way. Through it all, you can hear the constant rattle and clank of the endless rails carrying you toward the end of the line - for the train and, perhaps, for you.
The final hook - and this is the killer - is that all interactions are real time and simultaneous: while you're busy fretting over your next brilliant move, more than 30 major characters are walking and talking around you with their own agendas. Failure to act can be just as damning as doing something actively stupid.
The Last Express is a good game and a great piece of mood. Seemingly random first-person angles, especially early on, can be a little disorienting, but overall the game has a cozy-yet-tense whodunit feel, and easily compressed animation means you get more gameplay, instead of three compact discs' worth of crappy full-mo-video acting.
If you're a mystery fan, book a ticket aboard The Last Express - just read all the newspapers, trust no one, and be sure to keep your compartment door locked.
##### The Last Express for PC and Mac: US$39. Broderbund: +1 (415) 382 4700, on the Web at www.lastexpress.com/.
STREET CRED
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Death by Broderbund
