Art of Murder: Hunt for the Puppeteer
Art of Murder: Hunt for the Puppeteer
Sorti le 13 février 2009 sur PC, Art of Murder: Hunt for the Puppeteer est un jeu d'aventure en pointer-et-cliquer développé et édité par City Interactive. Second volet de la série, il place le joueur dans la peau de Nicole Bonnet, agente du FBI chargée de traquer un tueur en série opérant entre les États-Unis et l'Europe. L'enquête, qui repose sur la découverte de poupées vêtues à la mode du XVIIIe siècle laissées sur les scènes de crime, conduit le personnage à travers des décors modélisés en 3D représentant Paris, Marseille, les Pyrénées espagnoles, La Havane et La Nouvelle-Orléans.
Le gameplay s'articule autour d'une exploration en vue à la troisième personne où le déplacement s'effectue au clic vers des zones prédéfinies. La progression impose de boucler l'ensemble des actions disponibles dans une scène avant de passer à la suivante, avec un système d'indices accessible en permanence. Les énigmes, majoritairement mécaniques ou à curseurs, s'accompagnent d'une gestion d'inventaire autorisant la combinaison d'objets. Certaines séquences introduisent une contrainte temporelle, l'échec entraînant la mort du personnage et un rechargement automatique à la dernière sauvegarde, tandis que des cinématiques interactives ponctuent la résolution des objectifs.
Propulsé par le moteur Virtools, le titre propose une durée de vie estimée entre sept et sept heures et demie pour en voir le bout. Son accueil critique s'est révélé partagé, reflété par une note Metacritic de 56 et une note agrégée de 67,75. La presse spécialisée a livré des avis contrastés : GamingXP a souligné un divertissement solide offrant des casse-têtes accessibles aux vétérans comme aux néophytes, tandis que Meristation a pointé un manque de profondeur et une difficulté élevée. Du côté des joueurs, les retours oscillent entre une suite jugée inégale par rapport au premier opus, certains regrettant une écriture en baisse et des problèmes techniques — notamment une gestion des disques défectueuse —, d'autres saluant une amélioration globale, une intrigue correcte et une difficulté bien dosée qui s'achève avant la lassitude. Le jeu est actuellement proposé au tarif de 0,99 EUR.
Médias
Avis des critiques et joueurs
Critiques de la Presse (Metacritic)
« Yes, Die Kunst des Mordens: Der Marionettenspieler is a very entertaining game and offers brainteasers for old dogs and young detectives at the same time. »
« Another point and click adventure, following the original Art of Murder. As its predecessor, it lacks depth and it's quite hard, offering user huge amounts of items and little room for experimentation. Good graphics and sound, but without a compelling story. »
« Typical detective story with all its pros and cons – conjecturable situation advancement and simplified behavior will not spoil the delight of solving the case. [May 2009] »
« It took CITY Interactive just a year to churn out a sequel to Art of Murder (and produce AoM’s clone, Scorpio Ritual, at the same time). Without belittling the many flaws of Hunt for the Puppeteer, I have to admit the studio’s progress. Sleepless nights and the publisher’s whip have pulled up the series to the level of a second-rate blockbuster. »
« For better and worse, Hunt for the Puppeteer is a simple adventure without any pretensions. It can be relaxing filler easily played with your brain off, but lacks both the quality and character to bother with otherwise. »
« By game’s end, it almost seems as though the developers have gotten sick of the entire game and just want to get it over with. »
Avis des Joueurs (Metacritic)
« То же самое, что и первая часть. В чём-то лучше, в чём-то хуже, но на безрыбье сыграть можно. »
« Bottom line: +Big improvement over last installment +Decent story +Good gameplay, good difficulty +It ends exactly when it starts to get too tedious -Tedious voice overs, dull characters -Dated graphics, and the game generally didn't age that well -All in all, it's a decent, mediocre adventure game. I'm not really sure whether it's just the first installment of the series making this game look actually OK, or that the game itself it actually OK. I'd summarize it as mediocre, and not that bad, either way. Story, which is the main strength point of the adventure genre, it pretty decent. Felt a bit rushed at the end but it is fine if you lower your expectations a bit. Graphics are dated and at times rather drab, in a way you just can't ignore almost a decade after release. Music & sfx weren't bad but nothing special either, they came in and out when&how they should have. And perhaps that is the main problem of the game, that it simply offered nothing special with a rather low production value. It is fine to pass the time if your into the point and click genre already, and don't mind playing something decent. It did feel like some BIG improvement over the previous game, though. Along things that didn't improve, though, was the set of dull and uninteresting cast & characters, along with the rather monotonously voiced protagonist, and they just didn't do any good to the overall experience. The one thing which actually did feel much better for me was the GAMEPLAY, as this time around, the devs managed to combine the classic point'n'click features with the modern impatient players and will to progress without freaking over it too much. The difficulty was just right for me, not too easy and yet not too difficult, usually just enough to figure out after scratching my head a bit & not too long. The puzzles were also quite focused on several locations at a time, meaning you'd usually have around 5 locations to wander and solve the riddles with what you have, which was quite good for someone like me who doesn't like pixel hunting and going through tenths and hundreds of details in order to find the one thing that would move things forward.. Hopefully the next installment improves things even more and makes the series worthwhile. »
« The story is actually pretty good, but low production value seems to get into the way. Skipped animations, sometimes you feel like whole cutscenes are missing, only showing the most needed stuff. The background images are kind of good, too. I also liked most of the puzzles, there are some harder ones, but it's not like you're always stuck or something. What's not so good? Well, you're playing an FBI agent looking for a serial killer, but most of the time, this gets put aside and you're pretty much a ''normal'' woman doing stuff that has nothing to do with the case. You arrive somewhere, a problem arises and you need to solve a lot of riddles with little to no connection to why you've come there, before you can proceed with the actual goal. What really got on my nerves were two things: 1) The same three or four comments for false actions over and over again. From start to finish. 2) Nicole, the main character, will not perform her actions before she thinks she should,which will lead to a lot of anger when you already know what to do, but she will just keep on claiming it's false until you, for instance, looked at a certain object and she'll say: ''Oh, I could do this or that with it.'' Even though the game isn't too short, this feels like filler content, especially towards the end, when she won't pick up a single item before she â »
