This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries look through other blog entries, or for a quick overview use the link at the bottom.

So... what happened to the website while I was gone? Just kidding, I already knew. Last week was rough for a lot of people and I didn't want to cloud the forums with dumb game write-ups so, I kinda just took the rest of the week and weekend to allow everyone to focus on more important topics. While no one is looking for my take on what is happening, I do wish Vinny, Brad, and Alex the best, and I am here to see what's next for GB. I started the blog on this forum, because I liked the product, the crew, and most of the community. While the cast may change, I am hopefully for the future, and I am here to see the change. Jeff, if you are reading (I know you aren't) feel free to drop me a line, I will gladly sign up for service to continue what was built here.

It does lead me to one final housekeeping update. Jeff has talked a lot about what a website looks like in 2021, and I'm not here for speculation, but if for whatever reason the GB website goes through changes and either stops existing, or no longer has a forum/blog tool, then I hope that those who have read my writings have enjoyed them. I will continue working on my list until they shut it down, but I do appreciate all the comments and people who took time out of their day to read it. Onward we go!

How did I do?

I need to stress at the top of the hour, that I never read the Agatha Christie book that this is based on. Therefore I can't say distinctly how true it holds to the original source material, but I have to assume it is a shade closer than Dante's Inferno was. We are of course talking about the game: "Agatha Christie's The ABC Murder," but you already knew that from reading the title.

ABC, is an adventure game where you take the role of genius inspector Poirot tasked with solving a murder case known as the ABC murders. Now the adventure genre can have multitudes, but ABC is less like adventure games of the past, as it doesn't solely focus on inventory puzzles, but rather on puzzle boxes. You go from location to location, investigating the area, talking to people, and looking at the scene of the crime, however nearly every location has at least one puzzle box to solve, which is a series of puzzles that you progress through in order to get whatever is inside. A good example of this is, you find a broken clock and realize there is something inside. First you notice that it is missing a clock hand, so you have to track that down. Once you place the clock hand, now you have to set the clock to the right time, and from there maybe a drawer opens that has a numerical keypad, that you then have to decode to finally get your treasure. These puzzle boxes are almost exclusively self contained, so all the clues are somewhere on the box, and you don't get transported out until you solve all puzzles.

While this may seem obvious, but ABC is not a game with an open world to explore. It is very much a story based game and the locations you explore are dictated by when and where the story wants to take you. When at these locations, you can't opt to leave until you have fulfilled what the game wants from you. Now there are miss-able things to look at, people to talk to, and you can "fail up" on some challenges, but ultimately this game is here to tell you a story, and you are either on that ride or not. For instance, later in the game you deduce who might be the next target and you are able to call and warn them. I butchered the phone call so bad, that I caused the target to actually suffer a heart attack, of course they survive it, and the game continues on, but you could handle the phone call better and not have that happen. The game does score you based on how well you play the game. It reminds me a lot of the Sierra adventure games, that had a big score in the top corner that was basically how close you are to 100% the game. This game does a similar thing, but its just for bragging rights (or possibly trophies if you play on PS4) as I was able to beat the game without a perfect score. So my phone call netted me like 5 points out of 20, for instance.

While this is certainly not a "Next gen" game, the graphics are a fun cell-shaded 3D, that I find very soothing. This is a game that despite its adult themes of MURDER, you could technically play in front of your kids as it is certainly not a game with photo realistic bodies you need to comb over for clues. ABC also has a mechanic that I actually think works quite well for detective games and one that I want to see implemented more (in the genre of detective adventure games). There are moments where you have to essentially go inside Poirot's brain to make sense of some questions that arise about the case. For instance, after examining a crime scene, you need to then answer what you think the motive for the crime was. Well if you gathered all the clues, then you get to put them on a board and draw a conclusion from them, it allows you (the player) to solve the case alongside Poirot or at least see his train of thought. It is a small touch, but I liked being able to see if I came to the same conclusion after each crime scene, and if I can make sense of the clues I found. Now, obviously you can't accidentally draw the wrong conclusions, if you are supposed to take away from this section that the motive was not money, you can't move clues around to prove something else, but it made me more engaged with the story when I knew what Poirot also knew.

The most important part of any adventure game is on the puzzles, and for the most part ABC has some good ones. Now I will be the first to admit that this game is not necessarily difficult. As I touched on earlier nearly all the puzzle boxes have the clues on the puzzle as well, so it is less likely that you will miss some key piece of information, and more likely that you just have to rotate the item enough to find it. So, depending on what you are looking for out of a puzzle game, this might be a little on the easy side, but I still found the puzzles enjoyable enough to solve, and some of them did require some work to get from A to Z. However, why does every single person and room have one of these puzzle boxes in their house? I don't own one item that unlocks 3 separate times, am I doing something wrong in my life? Is there a place to buy a clock that has three different hidden drawers that I can house a single photo in?

Now, I am going to do a bit of a spoiler here as there are two things I want to talk about towards the end of the game. The first isn't really a spoiler, but apparently this game has two different endings, but it all comes down to a single choice you make late in the game. If you play the game like a normal person, you would ultimately have to play the full game twice just to make choice A or B differently from the first time you play to see the different ending. Why not just re-load your first save, you ask? Well because after the credits roll, the game autosaves in order for you to have a "completed" file on your system, and you can't just checkpoint pick your way to the end. I was happy with the ending I saw, and wasn't about to play through a second time just to see a different ending, I really dislike this mechanic where I would have to play through 99% the same game, just to see a 1% change.

Here is where we talk about spoilers:

Spoilers over!

All in all, me and my wife really enjoyed the game. My wife liked it enough to start listening to the original book on audio tape, so in a few days I can ask whether or not the game is the same story. I got my enjoyment out of it, and I think the game does some fun adventure game tricks, that aren't just combine item A with item B. The game is a little short, maybe a tad easy, and the whole spoiler issues I had above are my only negatives, but I certainly don't regret buying the game and having it on a shelf. Do I really see myself playing it again, or my kids touching it in the next 10 years... maybe not, but I'm happy to support the arts.

Is this game the Greatest game of all time: Nope

Where does it rank: It is the 23rd Greatest game of all time out of 48 games. It is just below Octodad: Dadliest Catch, and above Evoland 1.

Up Next: Mario Tennis Aces (Switch)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here

Thanks for listening.

I didn't play much of this one due to some inaccessible visual issues, but I was fond of an early 2000s adaptation of And Then There Were None, which toyed with the original story just enough to make things interesting while still feeling surprisingly faithful in its writing. It's well worth tracking down if it's available anywhere to anyone interested in Agatha Christie games.

@sparky_buzzsaw: thanks for the read.. me and my wife enjoyed playing this as a mystery game so anything similar is a worthy recommendarion for us. We ordered one of the x360 sherlock holmes games hoping it has some of the same feel..

But im curious, what visual issues did you have?

This time I'm really not going to quibble with the placement on the list. I will say that the game is not accurate to the source material. I never read the book but I did see the 2018 BBC series starring John Malkovich and it's a bit of a departure from Christie's normal writing. In this one Hercule Poirot actually has a gun fight with death and then descends into hell to find a murderer, fighting off a series of gruesome enemies like babies with knives for arms and evil demons riding other demons. He eventually has to fight Lucifer in one on one combat in order to claim the murderer and bring him to justice, while Lucifer's dong flops around like a trout on the floor of a rowboat.

Strange that they decided to change so many of the details and turn it into an adventure game!

Good read, as always.

@bigsocrates: Would it be weird that i actually believe John Malkovich would be in the movie/show you describe? I did see while doing some google image search for screens of the game, the BBC version, so maybe i watch it one of these days and see how much lucifer dong is really in it.

@imunbeatable80: Just general minor things. I think the most egregious was the case note fonts, if I'm not mistaken. It's been a while. Might have been some color blindness issues but I remember liking the style.

@imunbeatable80: John Malkovich is a national treasure who has been in a lot of weird projects, so no.

Real talk, it's a decent series. If your wife ends up liking the book you guys should check it out. It's only a few episodes and it's pretty well acted and enjoyable.

I smell a spinoff series where you rank every TV show and movie!

@bigsocrates: When this series was conceived as a youtube channel, there were plans for a whats the greatest movie, and whats the greatest board game.. no joke. Both were abandoned as it was hard for me to mic and video everything without getting in the way of a friends night. Maybe in a different life, those are the rankings i do and video games fall by the wayside, we will never know.

@sparky_buzzsaw: yeah i can understand that. When playing the game docked some stuff was a little hard to read, and i needed to get my glasses to actually read. I just chalked it up to having shitty eyesight, but perhaps its a readability problem

I had a pretty decent time with this game too! The figuring out clues in Poirot's brain was a cool highlight for me too (kinda like in Judgment where when you are given the opportunity to ask people questions, asking relevant questions gets you a bonus which makes you feel like you're putting yourself in detective shoes). An Agatha Christie plot encasing a puzzle box game is also cool, instead of the pure adventure route. I wish there were more of these.

@snaketelegraph: Thanks for the read. I was really bummed there didnt seem to be a lot of similar games out there. When i looked at other Agatha Christie games they all seemed hidden object based, and other detective games seem old school adventure game based. Maybe if i keep digging