Saturday, June 20, 2009

CLUE Review

Mr. Boddy was murdered last night in his mansion. He had three guests at his house. It is your job to inspect the house and question the suspects, then accuse who murdered Boddy, in what room, and with what weapon.  In this element it is similar to the board game, CLUE, and that is why it Electronic Arts named it that.
CLUE, $4.99, isn't an actual port of the board game, it is a mystery game based on it. In the missions, Mr. Boddy dies in his mansion, and there are varying numbers of people and rooms in his mansion.  The game revolves around how many minutes you have left, and is not actually based on how long you take, but instead, how many activities (inspecting fireplaces, switching rooms, talking to people, etc.) you do.  There are two introduction missions, and ten regular missions in three groups of three, also increasing your reporting skills. You start with the tutorial levels as an Internship, get up to Junior Reporter, then Reporter, then Beat Reporter then Senior Reporter. For each level, you get a certain amount of stars based on whether you accused the right person, room, weapon, and if you had a certain amount of time left.  Once you get into a house, you can scroll around the room that you are currently in. There are five buttons in the top left of the screen. The one on the far left is obviously the pause button, the one with your boss is to call in with your report, the button with footprints is to move around the house, the flashlight is to investigate objects in the room, and the speech bubble button is to talk to a person in the room.  On the bottom of the screen are three buttons to help you keep track of your clue, the crime map, where you can arrange the suspects and weapons in rooms freely, the notes button, where all the notes you have found are stored, organized into a general section, and sections for each of the suspects.  To the right of the note button is the Suspicions button. In it, you can check off suspects, weapons, and rooms to clear them from your suspicion. (Note: You can always un-clear them.) When you go to the map to walk around the house, it shows what items are in what rooms, which is helpful when a suspect says that another suspect was doing something involving an item.
Because you have to get a certain amount of stars on each mission to unlock the next three, and each mission has different endings, there's tons of replayability. The interface is easy to use, the graphics are cool and have a geometric feel to them.  You can sit down and play the game for hours, or play one mission for a few minutes. It takes time and many playing sessions to master the game.
The one thing this game lacks is some sort of multiplayer. The fun of the board game CLUE is that you are racing against a friend or family member, but this game lacks that breakneck pace. The game would be much better if it had a classic option where you could play a port of the original game, on one device or through WiFi, like EA has done with its previous ports of board games.

Pros:
Great Graphics
Interesting Mysteries
Replayability

Cons:
No Classic Mode
No Two-Player

Bottom Line:
Fans of mystery games; go out and get this. Fans of CLUE; go out and get this. Customers who have some spare money on their hands and want to have some fun; go out and get this.

Scores:
Graphics: 4.75/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Controls: 5/5

Overall: 9/10 (not an average)

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