Still Life (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.7 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Ryan Davis
• Reviewed on: 06/01/2005
• Updated on: 05/17/2006
• Released on: 05/04/2005
• Originally published on GameSpot: Still Life (PC) Review

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, seeing how the game is published by the appropriately named Adventure Company, but Still Life is an adventure game tailored to the specific needs of established adventure game fans. Think back to good old Gabriel Knight (if the name means anything to you) and you're pretty close to the style and tone that Still Life aims for. Its slavish dedication to convention will scratch the methodical, cerebral itch all diehard adventure game fans have. As a genre exercise, though, it exerts little energy to draw in new players.

Still Life revolves around the brutal, serial murders of prostitutes in two different cities during different eras. You start the game in modern-day Chicago as FBI field agent Victoria McPherson, who is young and darkly energetic, with a certain disaffected cool and penchant for crackin' wise that is almost a mandatory trait for adventure game protagonists. Victoria's inability to stop the killer starts getting the better of her, and she finds herself collecting her thoughts while sifting through her dead grandfather's belongings in her childhood home. This brings us to Gustav McPherson, Victoria's grandfather, who is a private detective in Prague in the late 1920s. Gus is more personally haunted by his case than Victoria, and the story arc in Prague carries more weight and feels creepier because of his emotional involvement.

The game cuts back and forth between the two stories, treating the murders in both eras with the same grim professionalism of a forensic procedural like CSI, though with less flash and thicker atmosphere. The biting cold of Chicago in the winter is nearly palpable, and it is reinforced by the sagging structures of abandoned buildings and empty municipal offices. The game does an equally good job of presenting the aged feel of Prague, with crumbling old-world architecture, murky waters, and some heavy fog effects.

It's the atmosphere that carries the experience in Still Life, so it's unfortunate that the mood is undermined by clunky visuals. The characters themselves look fine when they're standing still, but they move rather mechanically and have awkward mouth animations that make them look like ventriloquist's dummies. More care was taken with the backdrops, which are all prerendered, but much of the detail and overall fidelity is lost to what appears to be overzealous image compression. You don't really get a sense of the scale of either of the cities, and each location you visit feels less like a place firmly rooted in reality and more like a painstakingly arranged set.

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