Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders Review – A Captivating Mystery That Ends Too Soon

Adapting a book into a video game isn’t something we see too often, let alone one as well known as Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders. It’s one of the most critically acclaimed mysteries, and is Hercule Poirot’s signature adventure. Did developer Artefacts Studio make the right choice choosing to adapt the famous novel, or would a new mystery have been a better fit?

If you’ve played any of Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes games, or Murdered: Soul Suspect by Airtight Games, then you should have a good idea as to how The ABC Murders plays. Players will be investigating crime scenes for clues, talking to witnesses to get their alibis, and doing the sleuthing you’d expect from a top notch detective like Poirot. After they’ve collected enough clues, players will then have to get their grey cells moving and solve logic puzzles in order to figure out what happeend.

The puzzles, for the most part, are pretty clever and will require a decent bit of persistence to figure out. You’ll be examining objects for hidden compartments, and trying to open locked gadgets on a pretty regular basis. Sadly, there isn’t a hint system in place so if you get stuck on a particluar puzzle you’ll have to hit your head against it until you eventually solve it. Or just look up a walkthrough online, but that takes all the fun out of being a virtual detective.

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“That’s just one of the many things that make The ABC Murders feel unpolished and a bit rough around the edges.”

That’s just one of the many things that make The ABC Murders feel unpolished and a bit rough around the edges. Another frequent annoyance is that Hercule Poirot moves about as fast as a slug, and yet you have to explore some pretty large crime scenes. Sure, Poirot isn’t exactly known to be an athletic man who runs around, but being forced to move at one mile-per-hour isn’t enjoyable.

Thankfully, the game does do some rather neat things with the investigations that show off Poirot’s abilities as a sleuth. Throughout the game you’ll be able to observe characters from a distance and discern how they feel from just a glance. These end up being important clues, and there’s a lot of value in watching how people react.

The presentation of the game is also a high point as Poirot and company are all fully voiced. Artefact Studios has also given the game a great graphical style, with it looking like an animated cartoon. This makes looking around each area fun, as they all look fantastic. If there’s one upside to Poirot moving painfully slow, it’s that you’ll have a lot of time to look at your surroundings.

Since The ABC Murders is a pretty faithful, if simplified, retelling of the novel, it ends up being a rather short game. If you don’t get hung up on any of the game’s puzzles, then the game is less than 5 hours long. This also means that most of the game’s target audience already knows the twist to the story, and the surprise factor is gone. When DreamCatcher Interactive put out an adaptation of the same novel for Nintendo DS several years ago, they included an option that allowed players to change the murderer. This added replayability to what would otherwise be a linear experience, and that’s sadly missing here.

Instead, players are given an enjoyable, yet awfully short trip through one of Poirot’s signature adventures. It’s a lot to ask $39.99 for such a short game, so price-conscious gamers might want to wait for a price drop. This won’t rival Frogwares’ best work, but it is a fun way to enjoy an afternoon if you enjoy detective games.

***A PS4 review copy was provided by the publisher***