Still Life (Xbox, 2005)

Yes, Still Life is a perfect title for a game that has about the same pace as the Annual Slug Racing Competition: very slow moving with hardly any player interaction. The controls are clumsy and difficult to use. You need to press about 6 buttons to activate one tool. And if you happen to use that tool incorrectly or in the wrong place, it goes back into inventory and you have to start all over again.

Also, interacting with the environment itself is very difficult. The characters are jerky when they move and it is hard to tell where you are going. The graphics themselves are great at times, fuzzy at others so you can't always see small details that are important to the story line.

As for plot, it would make a good story for a movie, but for a game it is quite boring. You mostly spend your time pushing a button to make your character talk. When you are doing something, it's mainly going up and down on an elevator or walking around a 1920s era Chicago. When your character is actually doing something productive, it is excruciatingly slow.

The tasks you are set range from the silly and inane like making cookies and getting your boss coffee (yes....seriously) to the near-impossible and nonsensical puzzles. (A Hint: use one of the game cheat code web sites to get through some of the puzzles. It's the only thing that helped keep me from throwing my controller out the window) You jump from being FBI Agent Victoria, to her grandfather, Private Detective Gus. Both of them following similar cases set about 8 decades apart. The game tries to use dialogue that is supposed to be shocking (they drop the f-word a few times, and use cheesy prostitute innuendos) but comes out as downright stupid.

The best action sequences are out of the characters hands, and play out as movie scenes.

Basically, the game falls short of it's hyped "suspenseful crime solving drama." Instead, it's something you can play when you're lying on the couch and don't feel like moving or thinking much.

This game is excellent. One of those games that I do not know how well it did but hope it was really successful for it's creators. It's kinda like Resident Evil but with crime/murder. It's not a clone of RE either. Sharp graphics,animation and sound. Suspense and great puzzles that are challenging but not to hard. I love this game!