Movie

Copyright : Imagine | Reviewed by : Spirotek

Taking its influence from the classic Film Noir style of detective story, Movie puts you in the role of Private Investigator Jack Marlow on the trail of a missing cassette tape. You have to locate a girl to help you with your enquiries and avoid bad guys and vicious stuffed dogs, solving puzzles as you go.

Graphics

The graphics here are as crisp and detailed as the black and white movie scenes on which the game is based. The scenery and sprites are very carefully drawn in monochrome and the animation of your character as he saunters between rooms, hands in pockets, occasionally bothering to become involved in a gun battle with some henchmen, is very nicely observed.

The colour scheme for the most part is purposefully drab and lends the game a convincing prohibition-era atmosphere. Just sometimes though the locations are rendered in quite bizarre combinations of colours; televisions stand silently displaying snow; sometimes objects move as you enter rooms, and stuffed dogs bounce like rider-less Space-Hoppers. It?s surreal graphical touches like this that help make Movie such a strangely atmospheric experience.

Sound

The sound effects add greatly to the oppressive atmosphere, though again there is not much to speak of and the watch-word is subtlty. Just footsteps, gun shots and the distant sound of something, well, undescribable really (at least, I never worked out what it was).

Gameplay

Movie is certainly not an easy game to understand or to play. To inject a greater degree of control into the character the programmers opted to implement a rather inertial menu driven system that allows you to choose between walking, talking, shooting, picking up objects, etc.

The principle is a good one but unfortunately makes for some tricky situations as it is impossible to switch quickly between modes of operation such as walking and firing your gun. In practice the game is not particularly fast paced but the menu system is cumbersome enough to hinder things on occasion.

Still, once you get used to the system it improves slightly, and the sense of exploration coupled with the cluastraphobic atmosphere and sinister undercurrents make for a game that is really quite fascinating. The puzzles are good and require quite a bit of thought, and a map is essential to make any progress.