JoinDots

Onward on another adventure reviewing Titanic-themed games. I have reviewed three so far, and show no signs of stopping. Tired yet? No? Then, ALL ABOARD!

I have forever been searching for half-decent hidden object games for the Nintendo Wii…and ever since I found Mystery Case Files: Malgrave Incident, a great game on the Wii, I held out hope. The game, Titanic Mystery continued to come up in my hidden object searches for the Wii, but it has also been difficult to find around these parts. Funny too, another game called 1912 Titanic Mystery also came up in my search…but impossible to get as it appeared to be only available in Europe.

As you can surmise from the title of this blog post, these games are one and the same. Don’t ask me why, but the packaging for North America calls this game Titanic Mystery, yet the game itself on-screen is called 1912 Titanic Mystery. At any rate, I managed to find a copy at an EB Games, and asked my sweet hubs to bring a Wii upstairs to the living room where I game so I could review this for y’all. What a guy!

A replica of the original Titanic has been built and is set to sail on the anniversary of the sinking of the 1912 Titanic. All of the ancestors from the original voyage are invited to board and experience Titanic II’s maiden voyage across the Atlantic. The media are out in full-swing and everyone is excited to participate… Everyone except for a terrorist who has communicated with you that they have planted a bomb somewhere on-board, and you must find out who has!

Throughout the game you get a bit of a history lesson on the Titanic. You are made to search for missing pages from a diary authored by a young woman who was on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. You get to know some of the characters on the ship – a tad stereotypical in nature, that can somewhat be akin to a poor man’s Love Boat, complete with an Isaac knock-off. The person responsible for planting the bomb keeps dropping notes to you around the ship, and fascinatingly, all the characters seem to know the notes are for you!

Seriously, I am making this plot line more exciting than this game actually is. In truth, the gameplay of 1912 Titanic Mystery is quite dull and repetitive. Hidden object scenes force players to search for the same object over and over. The same mini games are also provided, such as “unscramble the image,” or “find all the birds in this scene.” Yawn.

This game is visual all the way, and unfortunately, the images were super blurry on the Wii version. The Wiimote allows you to zoom into a scene to get a better look, but honestly, in most cases, all you see are blurred images. The hidden object scenes, in particular, give you a headache.

This scene above is pretty much the resolution I got. Now, imagine zooming in on it…

Let’s also address the fact that the Wii can be glitchy at the best of times if you don’t have your Wiimote and sensor bar configured properly. When I first started the game, I ran into this issue – my bad. But, once I fixed everything, I would still experience issues with trying to select things on-screen. I am not sure if this was me, the Wii, or the game itself. Like most of the other Titanic games I have played so far, 1912 Titanic Mystery also has a PC version. Mind you, I don’t know which came first – the Wii version or the PC version – but I’ll put money on the PC version being much better visually and the gameplay being more comfortable.

Thankfully, unlike Murder on the Titanic for the Nintendo 3DS, you are able to skip puzzles in 1912 Titanic Mystery, but the game weirdly penalizes you 10 minutes…odd since the game has never given you a timer anywhere in its gameplay, so I am not sure where this would have any impact except perhaps on achievements, which I never received. Lastly, I might have been rewarded with a decent ending had I finished this. I just…couldn’t do it. The graphics were way too blurry, and because of the repetitive gameplay and glitchy mechanics, I decided to move on.

Maybe the PC version is better?

1.5/5

1912 Titanic Mystery
JoinDots / O-Games
2009

I have been on a tear with playing Titanic-themed games lately, and was excited to find Murder on the Titanic for the Nintendo 3DS for sale in the Nintendo eShop, a game with the notoriety of being the first hidden object adventure game being sold there (according to Nintendo). The game seemed decent on preview, with a solid story and puzzles to match. I decided – what the hey…let’s try it. I soon realized this good-looking game was lipstick on a sweaty pig.

Murder on the Titanic begins with the story of a killing that occurs on-board the Titanic the night of the ship’s fateful voyage. The victim was a coal shoveler down in the Titanic’s engine room. Not to fear, the Captain happens to know the great Inspector Magnussen is on board and calls on him to investigate the death. The Inspector agrees to be discrete as the guests are unaware of the murder, but could cause a frenzy should they find out. You play as Magnussen, searching for clues in hidden object scenes and solving puzzles with the obvious ultimate goal being you find the killer. Of course, all of this seems like foolish busy-work, considering we all know how the evening ends…

I have to say, that I was impressed with the overall look of Murder on the Titanic; the graphics really looked great. The problem I have is with the game’s puzzle mechanics. Like Hidden Mysteries: Titanic (the last game I reviewed), Murder on the Titanic is a port from the PC version, and unfortunately it shows. Clicking around in hidden object scenes was fine; it was if you needed to do anything more, like drag an item or pick it up to move it; sometimes these games don’t do those mechanics well on the 3DS (let alone the DS…). In one scene, I was to use my stylus to move a crate under a pile of fallen pipes. The game refused to let me select the crate…at least not until a game crash resulted in me having to start the puzzle over from scratch. Amazingly, I was then able to move the crate. This glitchy nonsense happened several times throughout the game.

Porting problems from PC to 3DS persist in Murder on the Titanic, particularly in the hidden object scenes. Normally, in any game that provides a hidden object puzzle, a list of items to search for is provided. The 3DS version of Murder on the Titanic’s hidden object scenes oddly provided a shortened list of search items with a fraction of the objects the PC version provides…I assume as much because I was able to click around the scene randomly on items that weren’t listed and still gain points for finding them.

Forget porting issues, I had one serious problem with Murder on the Titanic that is completely inexcusable: You CANNOT SKIP A SINGLE PUZZLE.

The ability to skip puzzles is one gaming mechanic that is a standard in casual gaming, and sets them apart from other gaming genres. If a puzzle is too difficult or boring, one should have the ability to skip past that puzzle so they can continue in the game; they should NOT be held back by that puzzle. Often, when a skip button is provided, gamers are given a penalty like a reduction in points, or are punished by adding or reducing time to their clock, thereby affecting their game achievements. Not allowing to skip past a particular puzzle leaves gamers with only two choices: persevere, or abandon.

Friends, the developers did a massive faux-pas with Murder on the Titanic, and this was made all the more obvious when I ~~wasted~~ spent HOURS trying to figure out how to solve one puzzle. I was stuck but had no choice; it was solve it or bust. No thanks to the internet, I toiled (and boiled…and fumed…) on this one puzzle. And I wasn’t the only one that ran into trouble: this freaking puzzle caused some outrage on forums around the internet from gamers unable to solve it. What makes it worse – the puzzle in the 3DS version differs from what is in the PC version, and with no walkthrough available online for the 3DS version there was ZERO help out there.

You are left to solve this puzzle FOR HOURS while the likes of Inspector Magnussen,
Brendan Fraser and Jessica Fletcher stare back at you…Lawd ha’ mercy…

I eventually figured out the solution to the puzzle, but it cast huge shade on how I felt about this game. What was typical irritation that I get with the usual tomfoolery that comes with a bad 3DS port, turned into frustration, and the conclusion that this game is not recommended to even the expert casual gamer. I hope that anyone reading this to figure out if Murder on the Titanic is for them will understand this fact going in…

HOURS, I tell you…

Maybe the PC version is better?

1.5/5

Murder on the Titanic (Nintendo 3DS)
Easy Interactive
2012