Case Files: Behind Closed Doors

I recommend this on deep sale or bundle for a 2-3 hour mystery centered on video interviews that you watch, and then you make some choices that influence the interrogator. Some influence what you actually learn from suspects, and some are just progress gates based on understanding evidence & interviews. I got only half of the six fact checks correct, but they make it optional & easy afterwards to identify which ones were wrong. With those, it was still reasonably intriguing and difficult to figure out who did it, which I saw as the game's strength...or a show of my stupidity? Acting could be better by the oldest guy, and the cop buddy's voice acting on calls was sub par, but everyone else was alright. I appreciate the settings options to skip any video or audio segment, and also an assist when asked to identify evidence that contradicts the most recent interview. This makes it much easy to go back and make choices that reveal more info. There are also clear achievements when you factually get something correct.

I wish I could give this game a neutral review. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. First of all, the actors (all of them,) were phenomenal. They were believable, showed the right amount of emotion at the right time, even sloppy, when the situation called for it. Plot spoilers ahead, but I will spoiler tag anyway-[spoiler] First of all, I feel like the writing could have been better. There were a massive amount of underutilized elements and items. One of the suspects was a debt collector and there were playing cards and alcohol found in the living room. The victim called a cab the night before he was killed. There were both sleeping pills and alcohol found in his system. Now, I know that not all real cases use all of the evidence, but it felt like there was some grand conspiracy here that could have been woven, only to reveal the true killer at the end was happenstance. Also, I think it's an extremely stupid idea to think someone is dangerous and willingly choose to go into their house just to steal their gun. That part of the plot seemed deliberately stupid, but it could have been explained with the killer's naivete. [/spoiler] TL:DR - Great game for 1 night, good building of tension, didn't release too much information at one time and well-paced. Overall, not worth the full price. Somewhat worth it for 50% off.

Spoiler-free review, so sorry for some vague criticisms. First off, I really did find myself caring a little about the chars, which is impressive. That said, the investigation itself is the core, so let's talk about that. Of all the "do you believe this statement" questions, only two were really tough, where I felt I was guessing. The first one was the hardest, because I caught one lie early on (which was unrelated). The second type of question was to find contradictory evidence/statements. It seems you have unlimited guesses, so it's really just a matter of how much time you waste (which has no in-game effect) before moving forward. Of the...6? such questions, 2 stumped me. The first was because I forgot something relevant, so that's on me. The other one...there were 5 items that were relevant to the contradiction, many of which hadn't been used (this was late in the game, too, so that seemed important). All in all, I'd recommend it. Pretty easy interface, pretty logical, decent chars.

This is a continuation of.....

I'm too tired to write lol. But if you like detective games or/and fmv games you can't go wrong with this one. It's the second one in the series, and I've already bought the third one and finished the first one.

This is a decent little game. You take the role of a police detective investigating the murder of an abusive boyfriend, and must examine various pieces of evidence - such as crime scene photographs, autopsy reports, security camera footage, and recorded interviews - to determine which of the four suspects is guilty. The suspect interviews, which make up the bulk of the game, are well-written and acted. They remind me of real-life police interrogation videos, and the writers clearly did a lot of research into genuine interview techniques - no over-the-top Hollywood stuff here. Poring over the evidence to spot lies and contradictions is quite fun, and felt closer to real detective work than pretty much any other game I've played. The downside is that you have very little control over how the interviews play out - what happens is that your detective partner asks the questions, and occasionally pauses to ask you whether you think someone is telling the truth. Since this is a murder mystery, it's hardly a spoiler to say that nobody is being wholly truthful at first, and sometimes your partner seems to ignore really obvious lies in favour of asking you about something else entirely. At times this left me unsure whether to answer "no" because the suspect is clearly lying, or "yes" in the sense that they're not necessarily lying about that SPECIFIC issue. I also picked out the real culprit fairly early on, which made some of the other interviews feel like rather a waste of time. Later in the game you have to identify statements or evidence which contradict something a suspect is telling you. This works rather better, as it's based on hard evidence rather than vague gut-feelings, but there are still moments where you have to guess which of several obvious contradictions the game wants you to highlight. Luckily you're given unlimited tries to get this right, but I really wish the gameplay could be expanded by letting you choose which topics to ask about, and deciding what order you want to interview suspects. I'd recommend getting this on sale, as it's quite short. Assuming you get most things correct the first time through, there's not much replay value apart from a variant ending. Nevertheless I'm looking forward to the upcoming sequel.

I liked the concept of this game, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The acting was really bad, especially the over the top scenes in the security camera footage. But the most irritating thing to me is the insulation that if someone has been abused, it would make them the most likely killer. That is a recurring thread throughout the game and it was really aggravating.