Not bad, but not good
I liked the story, the voice acting and the writing, but felt that they were draped of a game that was extremely thin on gameplay, and in some areas, quite obviously rushed. This is an old style adventure game with lovely graphics and ill-conceived arcade action sequences - although this quip describes a great many of the games I love, this one just doesn't do it for me.
The detective work has a mechanic where we 'deduce' which clue is most relevant to an investigation, but the connections range from too obvious to mind-bogglingly obtuse. I admit this is a tricky prospect to implement well, and I'm honestly not sure how I would improve upon it, but there is no punishment at all for getting it wrong. Not even with trophies/achievements. The third element of the game is collectables, many of which reward you with a very well written cut scene upon completion. I enjoy a good collectathon, but there is a catch here: you only get a single save slot for the auto check-points, no manual save, and upon completion there is no chapter select. There is no new-game+ mode either, so even though the collectables do stack across plays with regards to trophy/achievement progress, there is no way for the player to know which ones are missing. In my first playthrough I found 38 of 39 of one particular set. To get number 39 I need to go through the game again from scratch and start the whole collection anew.
My final gripe is with the lack of polish. Some character models are used over 5 times in quest-driven dialogue sequences. With the exact same model representing everything from an unrepentant serial killer to a grieving father. Another example is the final arcade sequence in the game; lacking any actual gameplay mechanic to drive urgency, we get an on screen timer with no lore-based explanation.
Overall the finished product makes me wonder what could have been. So many modern games lack compelling writing and acting that it seems such a pity for this body of work to be attached to a brittle, underwhelming game.
