Art of Murder - Deadly Secrets

"Art of Murder - Deadly Secrets" ist ein Wimmelbildspiel. Eine Warnung vorweg: das Spiel startet bei vielen nicht. Das liegt daran, daß viele Virenschutzprogramme die Startdatei als Trojaner einstufen und sie sofort löschen. Eine Lösung dafür - eine privat umgeschriebene .exe - findet sich zwar im Internet, es ist aber schon reichlich peinlich, daß hier ein Produkt für Geld verkauft wird, daß bekanntermaßen auf den meisten Rechnern gar nicht erst läuft. Auch im fünften und letzten Teil der "Art of Murder"-Serie sind wir als Nicole Bonnet unterwegs. Eine Mordserie erschüttert New York und wir werden mit den Ermittlungen beauftragt, während denen wir schnell merken, daß die Morde wohl auch etwas mit einem großen Bankraub, der schon Jahre zurückliegt, zu tun haben... Die "Art of Murder"-Serie startete mal mit Point and Click Adventures, die zwar recht mittelmäßig, aber dennoch solide und durchaus unterhaltsam waren. "Deadly Secrets" ist ohne Frage der bittere Tiefpunkt der Serie. Bei "The Secret Files" dachte man schon, es könne nicht mehr schlimmer kommen. Aber "Deadly Secrets" ist schlimmer. Es ist nur noch ein äußerst billiges Wimmelbildspielchen mit wenigen anderen Rätseln und kleinen Verhören. Die Geschichte ist nicht erwähnenswert und an den Haaren herbeigezogen. Dazu ist noch der Umfang sehr gering. In nicht einmal zwei Stunden ist man leicht durch das ganze Spiel. Die Rätsel sind nicht wirklich schwer, manche sind eher nervige Fleißaufgaben. Bei den Wimmelbildspielen kommt die geringe Auflösung und das daraus resultierende schwammige Bild zum Tragen und macht einige zu findende Objekte nur schwer identifizierbar. Eine Sprachausgabe gibt es nicht, die Story selbst ist grottig und die Musik klimpert nichtssagend im Hintergrund. Alles wirkt so, als hätte es nicht genügend Budget gegeben, um ein vollständiges Spiel zu entwickeln. Und zudem läuft es eben auf vielen Rechnern gar nicht, was für die Betroffenen wahrscheinlich unwissentlich ein großer Segen sein dürfte [h1]Wertung:[/h1] 3/10 Atmosphäre 3/10 Story 3/10 Grafik 4/10 Sound 4/10 Spielmechanik 3/10 Balancing 3/10 Spielspass [h1]Fazit:[/h1] Kaputtes Gewimmel. [h1][b]3/10 Gesamtwertung

HOG only, but flat colors and the scene eventually resets if you take too long. Does have tons of hints via pickups. But meh. Pass.

Unplayable on Win 10 There is something going on with the interlacing as the top of the screen constantly vibrates. The HOG screen does not work: even I can see the object, even the hint shows its location, when I click on it, nothing happens. And I guess a 0.99 dollar game would not be fixed and patched by any developer.

The game doesn't work, it seems you need a very old system to run it and there aren't any fixes available.

This takes a little tweaking to work because the Intel graphics card doesn't seem to like these games. So basically you have to tell it to use your dedicated video card to be able to play. Is it worth it? Well, it's mainly a hidden object game more than an adventure game. Sure, you're Nicole Bonnet FBI agent again, trying to solve a string of murders. If you played the previous Art of Murder games, don't expect anything like those. Instead of a proper detective game complete with actual voice acting and cut scenes, all we have is a few lines of written dialogue and a whole bunch of hidden object puzzles. Some are timed just to make it even more annoying. I like suspense in my adventure games but not the kind in which I keep having to redo the same thing over and over because the developers decided to wash out the colors and ask you to find obscure things like a "bar." Care to give us a little more detail here? The biggest problem with this game is that the hidden object puzzle scenes are difficult for all the wrong reasons. You will have a huge room you have to find objects in, which wouldn't be so bad but the developers just piled objects on top of each other, I guess it's to make it more challenging. It's not more challenging so much as it just looks like a big sloppy mess. Half the time you can't tell what things are in the picture because the "camera" is too far away so you can't see anything. It felt like the developers just found a random picture and added things to it to make the HO puzzles. In one puzzle, you have to find a candle. There are about 12 candles in the picture, but none of them THE candle. Instead, there is one particular candle they want you to click on. Same thing happens in another puzzle with pens. This seems like lazy design. A pen is a pen is a pen. Right? Some of the HO puzzles are the standard kind where you can actually see what is on the screen. Those are alright, but there are several of the sloppy mess variety that kill the fun. Not one of the better HO games out there. The first part of the game actually has some story and you collect a few items, but midway through it's just going from one HO puzzle to the next. It's boring and impossible to find anything. We are supposed to guess what's under three layers of items? As I played this game, I became more angry that I had waited so long to find a solution to get this to work on my computer only to be let completely down. By the end of the game, the developers had completely forgotten the story altogether and just have you clicking from HO room to HO room. Lazy ass developers putting forth minimal effort. Piss poor game.

Edit: I found a fix for Intel users. Due to modern Intel graphic cards having issues with XP era games. The same thing is wrong with Art of Murder Secret Files in my other review. There are two ways to fix Hidden object bug! a) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! DUE TO FIXING ASPECT RATIO. 1. Download and Extract the files on Desktop. http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/ 2. Right-click the "Art of Murder Deadly Secrets." Click on "Properties." Click "Local Files" Click "Browse" 3. Copy and Past the entire dgVoodoo files into the "Art of Murder Deadly Secrets" folder Notice: "MS Folder" 4. Double click "MS" folder and open "x86" folder, copy and paste all files "D3D8.dll" to "DDraw.dll" into the main game folder with "MystSetupVideo.exe". 5. Open "dgVoodooCpl.exe" then click okay. Double click "MystSetupVideo" and click "Okay". Note: You can run from "MystSetupVideo" to get out of the Virus Error. b) Control Panel for AMD or Nvidia users. -Right click Desktop and click "Nividia Control Panel" -Click on "Manage 3D setting" - Click "Add" and select the Right "MystLauncher" assuming you have all games installed. -On "selected the preferred graphics processor for this program" change it to "High performance NVIDIA processor" -Click on "Apply" button It was default on UHD 630. AMD users will have to do the same. The game in Bigfishgames has the same issue. Secret files have the same issue.

While this looks like your typical hidden object game, the developer has bundled a trojan virus into the executable. Valve seems kind of okay with that, letting Windows Defender tackle it and not really doing much to punish these reprehensible criminals trying to infect people's computers with malware. They're charging you $7.50 for the privilege of having City Interactive compromise your PC.