Hector: Episode 3 – Beyond Reasonable Doom Review

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Once again, we’re back on yet another adventure with detective inspector Hector – the hard-nosed, soft-bellied lawman of Clappers Wreake, a town that took the “Great” out of Britain. He’s violent, drunken, and has a taste for all things criminal, corrupt, or smothered in curry.

Following on from the last episode ‘Senseless Acts of Justice’ we find ourselves lying on a hospital trolley with a cow’s leg on the floor. Yup, it’s that kind of story. Once Hector comes round, he is faced with the grueling task of working out where the hell he is. As some of you will remember from the last episode that I presume you will have played if you are back again in this third chapter, you were knocked out. Hector hits a piñata dangling above his head with the cow’s leg and finds a tape recorder and tape inside. At this point, the room is all dark and all you see in Hector. Once he plays the tape, the lights come on and you can’t help but feel you are playing a game from the horror film franchise SAW. You find your clumsy accomplice lying in a bath handcuffed and all confused. Well aren’t we all! What has happened? Where is that terrorist now? We nearly had him in the last episode, and now, yet again, we are faced with another sticky situation that becomes very smelly. I won’t say anymore about the story as it will spoil it for you, but lets just say don’t eat your dinner while playing the start of this episode.

For those of you that are new to the game and may have skipped the first two episodes, the very first thing you notice after the initial cut-scene is some beautifully drawn cartoony graphics. They are all 2D, but that doesn’t matter as this game draws on that old fashioned arty look. You are faced with some very detailed scenes to move around and interact with using the mouse in a point-n-click style adventure as we have become use to in Telltale’s games.

You need to select objects, combine them and use them on people and other objects within the scene to progress through the game. The sound again mostly comprises of the various characters’ narratives, all very humor-based with the comedy thrown in for fun. I must admit that, again, most of the jokes made me chuckle. This is a feel good game and great to play if you are feeling a bit blue. Again, like the previous episodes, we have references to real life things like Facebook and Farmiville to name but two. They are pretty funny jokes too, I take my hat off to the script writers for this series as they do have a good sense of humor.

The actual puzzles are not too hard to work out. There is never anything that doesn’t make sense as I have seen in many other adventure games, like combining a fish with a car engine of something daft like that. This is a great relief and adds to the enjoyment, if you can picture yourself in this ridiculous scenario and actually start thinking, “You know what, if I had those objects at hand I would try exactly that.”

The one thing did find slightly odd about the structure of Episode 3 was the way the game holds your hand all the way through the first scene by telling you onscreen exactly what to do. It doesn’t last long, but I did feel it would have been better for the game to simply have introduced you to it’s hint system here and leave the rest up to you. Episode 2 worked perfectly well with resorting to such simplification, however, it does not tarnish the game in any important way.

Now, to all of you that are tempted to try this game out, yes, by all means jump straight to this episode in the series. However, for full enjoyment, I would highly recommend you start from the first chapter as it will feel like you are attempting to read a book a third of the way through. The story continues from the last episode, and while to have the most enjoyment from it you will have needed to play the two previous episodes, the game does provide you with a flashback at the start from which  you can probably get an idea of what has been goning on.

Ok, so the question is do you go out and buy this final Episode? The answer is defiantly yes. Episode 3 finishes the story in a great way and I for one hope they make a further series following this crazy detective.

 

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.

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