Shadows of Doubt

I blame SethTzeentach for recommending me this crap

I tried, I really did... After 21 hours I must say that the idea is flawless, but the execution is souless. This game had the opportunity to be the definitive detective simulator. First hour is pure immersion, building the case, analyzing clues, taking pictures of the crime scene... it is just perfect. But then, you leave the building and you're faced with poor to almost none dialogue choices, stutters, bugs, dumb ai, repetitive side missions and a lame a*s combat. I forced myself to play this, I've waited 2 years! 2 years to see if the devs would make some significant progress, but I was met, yet again, with disappointment. I would wait at least 5 years to grab this, if the game doesn't get "murdered" by then.

The foundation was set for this to be something really special. They basically gave up and abandoned the game in a horribly unfinished state. A tragic waste of potential. Not recommended.

This game has a ton of potential, but half the things that happen don't make sense. The interactions with the NPCs is the core of the game, but seldom makes sense. They are all set up by default to be uncooperative, even when they are the victim you are trying to help. Typical conversation with an NPC that is the victim of a crime: Victim: please help me! Player: whats your name? Victim: i'm not telling you that Player: Have you seen anything suspicious? Victim: no Player: can I come in and look around? Victim: no way Or the classic: walked out the the street and picked up a trash bin set down the trash bin "illegal action!" NPC pulls out a gun and shoots you. wtf? The actions and responses of the NPCs just don't make any sense given the context of the situations they put you in. I love that this game is a bit of an open sandbox, but the sandbox needs to make sense.

This game use to be awesome before the 1.0 release. I don't know what happened. I've returned several times to try and try again, but just always end up frustrated and closing the game after 1-2 hours of no progress. After the release, the NPCs despise you asking any questions and never work with you to accomplish anything, I had a guy asking the public for help finding an item via a note in the lobby and he refused to give me any name at all when I was trying to confirm he was the right person to hand his lost item back to. Spoiler, it was his item and he put a public notice asking someone to find it, but is also the most socially hostile person living in the block and clearly doesn't actually want his item back. Murders never leave any clues anymore, you'll chase down every single lead you think you find and it always turns into an elimination of that lead, leaving you at a dead end with no choice but to brute force your way through solving every murder. you'll scan the whole apartment, search every shelf, every drawer, crack every computer, find every fingerprint, and absolutely nothing will be present that leads you to any answer or direction. My last and final case before I uninstalled: two women living in an apartment, .308 round killed one of them, no round entered through any wall or window, all were intact. Shot must have come from inside the house right? No murder weapon, no shell casing, only fingerprints in the home were the occupants. Suspected the wife, but had no information what so ever to go off of. Searched the wife, no weapon or any evidence to suggest they were involved. Found note stating typical 'weirdo at my mailbox'. My aha moment, Run down and scan the mailbox, find the fingerprint and determine it doesn't come from an occupant. Thinking wow, finally, my clue, but now what? There is nothing else to go off of to find out whos fingerprint it is. I search all of their contacts in the their address book and eliminate every single one of them. None of them are the right fingerprint type. None of their household members are the right fingerprint type, either. Neither occupant had a job at all, so no work place to investigate. It is also worth mentioning that the fingerprint type I found on their mailbox was also on 5 other mailboxes. Maybe the mail man? Who ever knows? I search the video of the day of the murder, find someone that was in the hall, chase them down and determined they were also no involved, as no match fingerprint on mailbox and no incriminating items on them or in their apartment or workplace. Yet another bust. The only option I have left is to go down to the city hall, log into a computer, and start typing from A to Z, printing off every citizen, until I find the citizen that has the type C fingerprint I've been looking for the whole time. After all of my efforts, I'm uninstalling. If I could, I'd get a refund. This game has turned into a revolving door of frustration that I just don't have the patience for anymore.

I really want to like this game but I can't. I got my 3rd kidnapping case. Easy enough to do, just get to the point where you can drop off the money and either arrest them there or follow them back. Except they don't show up. I wait 20-30 minutes irl. Call the kidnapper again. Wait another 15-20. Still no show. Restart the game, call again. Wait another 20 minutes and still nothing. Based on the community discussions, this has been a problem for years. Fine, whatever, I close the case. Next, I'm crawling through the vents for a mission. Keep in mind, this is a procedurally generated game, so I expect the vent routes to be goofy, but that's part of the fun. Unfortunately some kind of yellow object also spawned into the vents and I get stuck. No problem, I think, going to find an "unstuck" option. Except there isn't one. Check the community discussions; this *game-breaking* bug, along with a handful of others has been common for *years* and not gotten fixed. The ONLY solution is to get into the game files to play around with information and hope you don't break things, or to launch it as a special mode or something in Steam, unstick yourself, save, close, reopen normally, etc...seriously? Spend your money elsewhere.

I want to like it but the game's mechanics are too unreliable or buggy leading in cases having no leads, no evidence, and generally nothing to go on to progress a case.

Some really frustrating bugs/issues in this one. I really want to recommend it but I fail to understand how even the most glaring bugs haven't been fixed in the amount of time I've owned this and has been on steam. And released on console and in 1.0 recently, how the ♥♥♥♥ is that acceptable? I just quit over a bug that just did NOT let me interact with CCTV footage. Also try to tag a resident and just wont let me go back, have to click several time on the screen just to register anything on any cctv/pc screen. I decorated my bathroom and came back later on to a completely empty bathroom and couldn't replace anything (it just wouldn't let me).. Optimization is not the greatest. And would it kill to add even 2 more dialogue responses from people? Its like everyone is a hive mind. Gets so bland so quick... It can't be that difficult to code in lines of dialogue. Hope this game reaches its potential, and sooner rather than later. Maybe then I'll give it a recommend.

It was really hard to give this game a thumbs up The gameplay is actually fun, solving crimes, doing sidejobs and buying apartments ranging from a slum to 5 star hotel There's so many glitches though Sometimes the NPCs straight up appear through floors; for example, if you go on their computer at work when they're on the first floor and you're on the 8th, they might just noclip through the floor to give you the deathstare You can't interact with some characters, even cashiers sometimes Throwing a carton of milk on the floor might get 10 people with guns to try and murk you Placing items is really weird, if you put them in a drawer they might not retract at all and get stuck. If you previously placed them and try to re-place them to another spot very close, for example from floor to the drawer next to bed, they usually just get place on the floor and you cant fix that The difficulties are practically useless, you'd think easy mode gives you much simpler murders but they're just as hard as they are on extreme I'd really like to play this game a ton but there's so many gamebreaking bugs

嗯..玩到后面挺无聊的，枪纯装饰，喜欢推理就入吧