| OUR RATING:
4.8
FLAWED
|
TANGIBLES:
|
 |
Why you should buy it: You have no other way to check out an I Spy-style game or book.
Why you should rent it: To see if the low-res images work well with your TV or 20/20 vision. |
|
UNIQUE RATING:
4.8
  SUGGESTION:
Buy It |
Written by: Chris Selogy | Tags: Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos, Xbox 360
Though Interpol’s full title seems to suggest a James Bond-style stealth game, the real game is really not that interesting. The story deals with the latest word of the evil genius Dr. Chaos’ newest plan of doom and destruction and its your job as a member of Interpol, the international police organization, to track him down and stop him. Of course, this is done through investigating images of his supposed crime scenes and pointing out crucial evidence like dogs, cats, grapes, fishing rods, blue crabs, a hamburger, and more strange items that supposedly tell you where Dr. Chaos or his three minions are headed. It probably would’ve been better to stay away from the Carmen San Diego-style villain and globe-trotting story since it’s pretty bad here and kind of makes the list of items you must spot kind of ridiculous when you try to figure out why they’re evidence of Dr. Chaos’ whereabouts.
Interpol’s gameplay consists of just presenting a bit of story setting up why you’re looking at whatever location you’re at before letting you get to searching for the items. The items are generally very well hidden in the image that most will not be too hard to find without guessing by clicking on things that could be what you’re looking for. You get thirty minutes total to find all of the items in the three areas offered per city and if you think you’re taking too long, you can press Y to as for a hint, which pretty much just points the item out, so it’s not much of a hint. A better way would be to just point out the general area where it’s at to let the player have some dignity when they can’t find a certain object. You have a magnifying glass that you can use for a better close-up view of the picture, which is helpful when you either don’t have a great TV or are sitting a fair distance back from it.
The main issue that pop-up with Interpol is the lack of HD images, so whether you’re playing in SD or HD, the images can get a bit fuzzy when using the magnifying glass. There’s not much of an advantage to playing in one definition versus the other. If you’re in HD, the image isn’t really any clearer, as it just has a snazzy border to fill up the extra space that HD offers. The other issue is that there are some items that it asks you to find that are extremely well-hidden that can be misinterpreted as to what it would look like and some of the bonus stages that ask you to find eight of a certain item where the developers seemed to change the rules enough to fool you into not finding the items quickly.
The main campaign in Interpol contains 11 cities and three areas per city with the occasional bonus area when you would have to confront Dr. Chaos or one of his minions. With 30 minute limits to beat each city, there’s logically up to five and a half hours of content if you have bad eyes or just stink at the game, but it can be finished in under three hours easily with no skills and even less for those that may be great at these types of games. The nice feature is that there are multiple lists per area, so it may take a few plays of an area before you run into items you’ve been asked to find before. That adds a bit of replay value for a game that doesn’t have much to begin with. If you don’t have any friends nearby or not enough controllers on hand, Interpol’s four player online co-op can help you get your friends in on the action even though it’s not exactly the most compelling thing to do with three other friends.
As mentioned before, Interpol has an issue with the standard definition images that it presents to you regardless of what your TV offers, which hinders a lot of the potential for an HD version of this game. Looking back to the crisp, clear images in those old I Spy books puts this game to shame when you’re tasked to find smaller objects and it becomes a pain when it blends into other parts of the surroundings. The music is decent but nothing that’s any more memorable than the story that can’t be remembered in any detail, so it would probably be best to just play your own music over whatever the game has to offer.
When it comes down to it, Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos is just not an exciting or interesting introduction to this obscure genre for console or handheld owners. If you’re really looking for a good interpretation of the I Spy genre, check out Nintendo’s Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir for the Nintendo DS, which provides a simple, but fun experience that Interpol overshoots its target by a good margin. If you just have an Xbox 360, it’s better to skip this game and maybe try to find one of those old I Spy books at a library or maybe a bookstore that stocks older books from about 15 years ago. $10, or 800 points, is quite out of range for what would be a reasonable price tag for this kind of game.
| The earliest remaining artifacts of human habitation of the Beijing area were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in the Fangshan District where the Peking Man lived, dating them to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. |
 |
|
 Games, News, Reviews, Media and More |
|
 |
Gamer 2.0 Rating: N/A | Hype Rating: N/A
Gamer 2.0 Rating: N/A | User Rating: N/A
Gamer 2.0 Rating: N/A | Hype Rating: N/A
|
