Detective Case and Clown Bot in: The Express Killer Review – PC

Detective Case and Clown Bot in: The Express Killer is the second installment in a murder-mystery adventure series featuring somewhat boorish detective Justin Case and his flying robot sidekick, who usually plays the straight man but tells really bad jokes. Since I haven’t played the first game, Murder in the Hotel Lisbon, this review is coming from the perspective of someone fresh to the series. It doesn’t seem any knowledge of the prior game is needed, though, as it’s barely referenced in this sequel.

Developed by Portuguese indie studio Nerd Monkeys, The Express Killer is set in Portugal, and Case and Clown Bot have been asked by Case’s policeman friend, Garcia, to help solve a string of daily murders happening aboard an express train traveling between Lisbon and Porto. The game’s brightly cartoonish art style is intentionally low-res and pixelated for a charmingly retro feel, and its Vaudeville-esque soundtrack is right in tune with the game’s overall comedic presentation.

Gameplay controls are pretty standard for the genre, mostly involving clicking to move Case and Clown Bot around their environs, mousing around to look for things or characters in the environment to interact with, and clicking those subjects to examine or interact with them. The game’s also compatible with an Xbox controller, but I wouldn’t recommend it, as I found moving the cursor with the joystick much clunkier than using a mouse for scanning and clicking around on the screen, often in search of very small objects that aren’t selectable unless you scroll the cursor over them just right.

In The Express Killer, the main objectives are to talk to everyone and collect the necessary items (ultimately, three for each suspect or suspect group) to use in interrogating the suspects. This is where I found the game’s otherwise appealing pixel graphics to be a bit of a hindrance, since the flat colors and low-res graphics unfortunately also mean that objects (some as small as four pixels) are at times very difficult to spot and click on. Sometimes a helpful outline will pop up around an item on mouseover, and some items move a bit so they’re easier to spot against the backdrop, but it’s inconsistent. There were certainly times that I got stuck and resorted to semi-randomly clicking the background everywhere to find that one spot I had to click but kept missing. While I get that the scavenger-hunt aspect of adventure games is a large part of their appeal, it can get frustrating and monotonous when maybe 90% of the game is scouring the same four train cars (two of which are very similar) over and over for four nearly invisible pixels or that one spot that you somehow haven’t clicked. Maybe this kind of trial-and-error clicking is someone’s cup of tea, but I prefer a more intellectual challenge.

Once you have the items, though, you move on to interviewing the suspects, probably the game’s strongest feature. I wish more of the game was spent interviewing people instead of searching for hard-to-see items, but the interviews go quickly. To question a suspect, you’ll generally need to play a mini-game with them, the most memorable for me being the disgusting (but actually sort of fun) task of reassembling a set of none-too-clean dentures, tooth by tooth. Once that’s done, you choose whether Case or his robot friend interrogates the subject, then use the appropriate items and questions to point out suspicious or contradictory facts. Failing isn’t a huge problem, since it seems you can retry the mini-games and interviews as many times as it takes without any noticeable penalty, but it often involves tediously slogging through some repeat dialogue. It also doesn’t seem to matter which character you choose, though your choice affects the questions Case or Clown Bot asks, so you’ll get a different slice of the game’s quirky humor.

Speaking of humor, it seems that, unfortunately, many of the jokes and some of the meaning doesn’t quite make it in translation from the original Portuguese. I understand translations are tricky, especially in such a text-heavy game, and did my best to overlook that as much as possible, but some of the jokes and other text (such as some of the mini-game instructions) are a little difficult to parse in the English version. I also seem to recall there was an interview question that may have made more sense with some outside knowledge of Portugal’s geography, though I won’t discount the possibility that I missed something in-game. Overall, though, I have the feeling that much of the game’s appeal lies in its humor and perhaps other Portuguese cultural references, and sadly, I think we lose a lot of that in English. Also, at the time of this writing, the English text still has a number of typos and could use a little polish overall.

The game took me about five hours to play through, though much of that was spent repeatedly circling the same four train cars (plus a restroom) looking for the last few items I had trouble finding. I didn’t complete all the oddball Steam achievements (which include failing every single interview and finding Easter egg items), but unless you’re a completionist, you likely won’t feel the need to. Parents may also be interested in knowing that the game has a little bit of adult language and alcohol and drug use. Detective Case and Clown Bot in: The Express Killer is $14.99 on Steam and certainly has its moments (like the gross dentures game), but I have a feeling it’d be a better experience if you can play it in Portuguese.

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Gamer, engineer-turned-attorney, classically trained pianist, visual artist, stinky-cheese fanatic, and aspiring hip-hop dancer. I write reviews for Game Chronicles when I've got a spare moment or two.

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