Your character, Petra, is Oz’s greatest detective.
Like any imaginary universe worth its weight in fairy dust, the land of Oz didn’t grind to a halt after the events chronicled in The Wizard of Oz. Time marches on, things change, and the Oz that’s revisited in Emerald City Confidential, a casual, point-and-click adventure from PlayFirst, is a film noir–style fantasyland full of shady characters and a foreboding atmosphere--no Lullaby League in sight.
The story begins in medias res: You’re investigating the Lion, no longer cowardly and working as a high-powered attorney, but a shady one--in fact, he tries to have you killed in the first minutes. After you escape (no, that’s not a spoiler--the game wouldn’t kill you that quickly, and in fact it’s impossible to die at all), you continue trying to solve the decades-old disappearance of your younger brother.
Along the way you get involved in other cases: finding another missing person, confronting smugglers, ferreting out blackmail, and so on. Turns out all this mischief relates to the Phanfasms, a sinister group that’s taken over Oz, and the disappearance of two of Oz’s witches and even your brother’s kidnapping play in.
You unravel the plot’s threads by talking to non-playing characters around the game world. Interrogating people by clicking on questions in the dialogue trees nets you information and clues, unlocks more locations to explore, and gives you hints about what to do next. Along the bottom of the screen are your item inventory, the spells you’ve learned, and your trusty notebook full of clues. Some people won’t give up all their intel the first time you talk to them, so you’ll wind up backtracking and interrogating them again. Leave no question unasked!
The 50 quests unfold in a mostly linear order, although it’s possible to work on a few at once. You can’t actually fail a task, although you can get stuck--when that happens, reread the objective in your notebook and click the Hint button for more information. Performing impressive feats (such as winning a magical boxing match on the first try) earns you medals, which aren’t necessary to win the game, just something extra for those “gotta catch ’em all” completists.
The game’s voice acting is highly entertaining, with sarcastic snark fitting the film noir style, heightened effectively by the creepy music. We read a few complaints online about the length of some of the dialogue, but we disagree--it’s a point-and-click adventure, so talking to the denizens of Oz is half the point, and we were never bored. The richly colored backgrounds, bathed in shadow, were also impressive. We encountered occasional graphics glitches where part of the background wasn’t drawn in, but they never interfered with the gameplay.
The story is engaging, the pace is quick (we solved the game in six hours), and the feminists in us appreciate that most of the characters (and all of the cool ones!) are women. To paraphrase one Dorothy Gale, there’s no place like Emerald City.
Emerald City Confidential
COMPANY: PlayFirst
CONTACT: www.playfirst.com
PRICE: $19.95
REQUIREMENTS: 800MHz or faster G4, G5, or Intel processor; Mac OS 10.4 or later; 256MB RAM
Entertaining story. Good voice acting. Lovely background images. Light system requirements. Family friendly (some alcohol references). You can’t die. Universal binary.
Some backtracking. Occasional graphics bugs.
