The Rise Of The Golden Idol – yeah, he’s dead (Playstack)
One of the best detective video games gets a sequel, as the follow-up to The Case Of The Golden Idol fast-forwards 200 years to offer some even stranger crime-solving mysteries.
We always feel guilty about criticising indie games, since we know they’re working to miniscule budgets and with often only a handful of developers. But the one thing we won’t give them any slack for is how terrible they are at choosing names. They’re either unmemorable, unpronounceable, or impossible to spell and with this one we kept having to check what it was called, even while we were still playing it.
The Rise Of The Golden Idol is the sequel to 2022’s The Case Of The Golden Idol, whose name we also took issue with, because anyone hearing it out of context would assume it to be an Indiana Jones style adventure and not, as it is, a detective game set in the 18th century.
We’ll excuse the naming problems for a second time though, because this sequel is (mostly) every bit as good as the original, but with a new 1970s setting, better graphics, a smoother interface, and an even greater number of weird and intriguing crimes to solve.
The Rise Of The Golden Idol might have virtually the same name as its predecessor but the amateurish-looking art style has been tightened up considerably, to the point where it hopefully won’t put anyone off buying it this time. It’s still reminiscent of Maniac Mansion and other very early Lucasfilm Games adventures though and that’s clearly not an accident, because the game also has similarities with the early days of point ‘n’ click adventures.
As in the last game, rather than one contiguous story, The Rise Of The Golden Idol is actually a series of connected scenarios (20 instead of the original’s 12) that slowly begin to draw together and reveal the idol’s role in the various misadventures.
Rather than playing as a Columbo-like figure you’re instead an unseen investigator, able to explore every element of a crime scene without interference, as it remains frozen in a two second time loop – usually just a few moments after the crime has occurred.
The Rise Of The Golden Idol – build your case (Playstack)
The two Golden Idol games play similarly to Return Of The Obra Dinn, the first game to turn the investigation and solving of murders into a compelling gameplay mechanic – one that could be solved and enjoyed by anyone, without being either frustratingly hard or trivially easy.
As you examine clues, keywords are added to your inventory and these can be used in whatever way you choose to create hypotheses and statements, which you can then test for accuracy. So, for example, ‘The victim wasshot in the head by a gun’. You start an investigation knowing nothing for certain and therefore also have to work out who everyone is, in terms of their name, occupation, and reason for being there.
The gameplay …read more
Source:: Metro