Game Reviews

Red Johnson's Chronicles

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Red Johnson's Chronicles

Red Johnson's Chronicles is a point-and-click adventure that's cut up into lots of little chunks. There are puzzles to solve, but they're self contained, with the solution and the problem wrapped together in the same mini-game.

Elsewhere you're deducing, interrogating, and generally being a gravelly voiced PI in a city that doesn't care.

It's a clichéd mash-up of ideas, themes, and concepts, that holds together reasonably well for a while. But then you're dumped into one of the game's ridiculously frustrating challenges, and you find yourself reaching for the whisky.

The puzzles veer wildly from the painfully simple to the inexplicably tough, and manage to crush most of the enjoyment out of the game.

City nights

You play as the titular Red. He's a ruggedly handsome sort who solves crimes for a living. You're wandering around rain-sloshed dingy streets, collecting clues, fathoming puzzles, and interrogating suspects.

The game has a grim and grimy gumshoe aesthetic. Villains are usually heavily scarred, neon lights are usually reflected in puddles, and gory murders are usually happening just around the corner.

Most of the game takes place from a first-person perspective. Dragging a finger on the screen shows you which parts of the current scene you can interact with. Some of these offer meaningless info, others offer clues and puzzles.

You've got a tablet with you that you can use to analyse the bits of evidence that you find. You can keep track of the people involved with the case, and check your notes to find out what you've discovered before as well.

To die for?

It all sounds pretty good. And there are times when it is. The voice acting is great, and the atmosphere that the game creates is rich and interesting. Unfortunately though it doesn't take too long before it starts to stumble.

The second puzzle you come across is a poorly explained line-connector that's frustrating to the point that you'll probably want to quit. And things don't really get that much better.

Sometimes you'll have to have a deduction session, considering all the things you just learned while solving a puzzle. Get things wrong and the only way you can go back and have another look is by doing the entire puzzle all over again.

I forgot a couple of details I discovered after an achingly simple clock puzzle towards the start of the game, and had to go back and twiddle all the cogs for another five minutes. Even the bullet I removed from a wooden cuckoo had magically stuffed itself back in.

The investigation portions aren't great either. Get something wrong and rather than affecting the outcome of the case you just get to have the whole chat again. It feels silly, and kicks you out of the story completely.

No point, few clicks

Red Johnson's Chronicles has its moments, but getting to them involves wandering through a sludge of poorly implemented ideas.

The game's good looking, but once you scrape away that veneer you'll find a suite of mechanics that are at odds with one-another.

It's a shame, because Red is an interesting character, and his world feels like one worth exploring. But as hard-boiled detective adventures go, this is one that's worth giving the slip.

Red Johnson's Chronicles

There's a good game here somewhere, but it gets lost beneath poor puzzles and badly implemented ideas
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.