If you're the kind of person who just can't get enough of adventure gaming, wouldn't it be great if someone managed to cram two complete games into one? Well, it's happened, thanks to Divide By Zero and Psygnosis. The sequel to Innocent Until Caught is called Guilty, and it can be played all the way through twice with completely different puzzles, objects and objectives. But that still doesn't make it a great game. In fact, Guilty would be really disappointing if I wasn't already feeling pretty lackluster about Innocent Until Caught.
The story revolves around an antagonistic relationship between a planet-hopping con artist named Jack T. Ladd and the policewoman who catches him, Ysanne Andropath. (If you caught the wordplay in the character names, this is your chance to relish the most subtle humor in the game.) At the game's beginning, Ladd is in custody on board Andropath's ship. The player gets to choose which of the two equally disagreeable characters he or she wants to play. If it's the fiery haired Andropath, the point of the game is to bring Ladd in at all costs. Naturally, he has escaped from his cell, and is wandering the ship freely. If the player decides to play Ladd, then escape is the ultimate goal.
This is not a bad idea for a game, and the combination element is very well executed. By playing both sides of the story, the player gets a better idea of who is telling the truth at different times and who is lying like a dog. Unfortunately, the writing is not nearly as clever as the initial concept. If there's one thing worse than a humorless game, it's a game that tries to be funny and fails. Genuine wit is replaced by an overall snide tone. Most of the conversations between the two characters are overloaded with really cheap shots that aren't worth a snicker.
The puzzles in Guilty are quite straightforward, for the most part. The problem that most players will encounter is a lack of information. Just examining an object with the magnifying glass icon is not enough. The object must be completely scanned with the cursor to see if there is a "hot" segment of the object that can be interacted with: a panel or a button or something. This is a clumsy and frustrating layout. A puzzle should not be difficult simply because there's no sign of one of the necessary pieces.
This aggravation is increased by an interface that can't make up it's mind. The basics of the interface make perfect sense. There are a number of action icons that can be accessed either through the ever present menu bar or by right clicking through the series. There are separate icons for "take" and "use," which is the way things ought to be, except that sometimes "using" an object doesn't work, and you have to pick it up and click on another object instead. Frequently, after choosing the picking something up with the "take" icon, the player will click on the exit to leave the room only to be told that he is a fool for trying to "take" the exit. This is just laziness on the part of the designers.
The graphics are a bit of a mixed bag. While there are some very nice and smooth 3-D cut scenes, mostly of the spaceship in flight, the images overall are a bit behind the times. The character faces are pixelated and the backgrounds appear very flat and two-dimensional. For the most part, however, the visuals were sufficient to do the job.
While I have a lot of complaints about Guilty, it is far from the worst game I have ever reviewed, and certainly has some very good points as well. The musical score is very good, although I had to choose between music and voice in order to get the program to run on my machine. The sound systems apparently take up a lot of memory.
Guilty is not a bad game at all. It is a perfectly competent adventure, or actually two of them. The "buddy movie" style is a little acerbic, but the idea of doubling the game action is a very good one. That in itself is worth a few extra quality points, and I hope to see it used in future products. As for Ysanne and Jack, stranded together in outer space . . . well, I think they probably deserve each other, and I glad I'm not likely to run into either of them anytime soon.
