Story/Plot:
Fatal Evidence is a stand alone game that has you take on the role of an investigative reporter. You and your sister are invited to the reading of a will of her late-mentor when things go awry. A masked individual accuses one of the assembled group of being the murder of the mentor, and all assembled will die unless you discover who the true murderer is. You momentarily lose consciousness and when you awaken you find almost everyone has scattered. It is up to you to find everyone, and aiding you is the magical watch which can help tell whether someone is telling the truth or not.
As stories go, it works for a standard set up for the murder mystery genre and a fairly one at that. I think that is a shame, actually. A few recent hidden object games have actually included some minor choice variation, even in the ending, and I think it would have been nice for the player's actions to have some impact in the final scenes.
Visuals:
The game has good visuals; most things are easy to see without being to obscured. The people look like fine for the most part...at least until movement is involved whether it is walking/running or speaking.
While I doubt they will do anything with the walking, the speaking gives a weird uncanny valley feeling whenever the character's mouth moves. At this point, I would rather just to have the character stand still and let the voice go over it like many visual novels do.
Gameplay:
This is a hidden object game, and as such it has a small variety of mechanics in it.
First is the hidden object screens; there are actually fewer screens in this game than you might expect. However, the ones that are present are well done; you can usually find the object without needing a microscope. Some of the items require an extra step or two to find/reveal which engages the player a little more.
If you dislike hidden object screens, this game allows you to play a Match 3 game instead. The game isn't to hard, but I think doing the actual hidden object screens was more engaging.
Second, this game has a variety of logic puzzles, with varying degrees of difficulty. Any veteran of HoGs will have seen these elsewhere. What is nice is you can actually set the difficulty of the puzzle to easy or hard, and there is an option to skip it entirely after a certain amount of time has passed.
Third are what I consider point and click elements. You need to reach a height, so you must find a ladder, that sort of thing. Overall, this game does a good job doing this. Where it falls flat is how often it makes use of the same idea time after time.
Those familiar with some of my other reviews know that one of my biggest pet peeves for a game is if it makes you look for a knife/dagger/glass shard/sharp piece of metal/letter opener/etc. an excessive number of times. Needless to say, this game definitely did the same thing.
What is more frustrating is that it wasn't just cutting items that it did it with. There were four times I counted where you needed to protect your hand like from thorns of broken glass...and this leads to a player thinking "If my character runs into this this many times, why not just keep a glove/oven mitt with me at all times." The same thing happened when I needed a lever to shift something, a container to hold water, a magnet to move something (I clearly recall at least 3 times for this), etc.
The game does have a fast travel feature with the map which is nice because it felt there was more backtracking than was necessary. Once again, you expect a certain amount with hidden object games, but there is a balance to achieve.
Finally, this game has three other items you can look for in the game. These are coins, evidence, and pictures. The coins allow you to 'buy' objects in a certain screen. As far as I can tell, this really doesn't add to anything other than mere decoration.
The evidence and pictures give a few more bits of commentary on what happens in the game. I honestly think these two things would be better incorporate into the main game itself, making the player feel more like an investigator.
Sound/Music:
This game is fully voiced. Most of the voice were fine, and a couple were really good. This is actually one of the bigger casts for a Hidden Object Game. Don't expect each character to have a ton of lines, but it was nice seeing more than just 2-3 characters.
The music was fine; mostly background stuff that wasn't jarring. That said there were actually a couple of pieces that I liked, especially when they felt pertinent to the scene.
What few sound effects there are worked well, though this type of game really doesn't make an extensive use of such things.
Difficulties:
This game has variable difficulties. There is an expected easy mode or hard mode, but what is even better is that you can customize the difficulties. You can set the hint recharge time or skip puzzle time to as low as 1 second. There are other things you can decide to appear or not, but the recharge/skip puzzle tends to be the big ones.
Extras/Achievements:
One thing that I actually liked about this game is that it allowed the player to choose whether to play as a female or male with an appropriate matching voice. As far as I can tell, other characters refer to you properly in this instance. While this may not seem like a big deal, I do appreciate when I hidden object game does try something different, even if minor, and it actually works. I've seen other games that tried to include gender...and well, get pronouns wrong, voices wrong, etc.
As this game is the complete edition, it has a bonus chapter upon completing the main game. I actually enjoyed the bonus chapter; while not as lengthy as the base game, it is essentially a little more of the same. It is nice that it wasn't a prequel/sequel to the first game. In those instances, I always feel like that it should have been included in the base game.
Additionally, you can listen to individual music tracks, there are a small smattering of wallpapers, and you can play some of the games in this area as well.
Finally, for those who like achievements, this game has them as well. There are no matching Steam achievements, so for some players it means it might as well not have them.
Recommendation:
So would I recommend this game? I definitely would.
I know I mentioned some negatives above, but overall I can say I had fun with this game. It helped that it was a stand alone; some series are burdened by the weight of previous entries *looks at Mystery Case Files*.
In fact, I would be interested to see a sequel or two with this game, even with the truth-telling watch. I know some might think a truth-telling watch would make things to easy for an investigator of any sort. However, this is the sort of thing a creative developer can play with. For one thing, the watch isn't infallible; it doesn't necessarily judge motivation or tell nuance without further investigation. Furthermore if a subject believes they are guilty, but actually aren't...the devs watch might not know the difference. And of course, they can devise a game where the watch might be missing...or the guilty party may not be able to talk for whatever reason.
As a developer, I think Domini Games has promise, though they are obviously constrained by what Big Fish would allow.
Now, as to whether to buy it at full price. $10 isn't bad, especially considering many of the newer HoGs by Big Fish are now $14. However, if it is on sale, then it is definitely an easier recommendation to make.
