Police work is hard.
When you’re a kid you imagine it’s just a constant blast, running across rooftops and rolling over car bonnets. And if it’s not that, then it’s about having 48 hours to solve a case, downing coffee, drinking whiskey, mumbling that you’re ‘too old for this…’.
In reality there’s crowd control, paperwork, and the analysing of evidence.
That last part is exactly what Detective Minerva Case is all about – collecting evidence and putting it into a timeframe. This is the second game in the series, following DETECTIVE: Stella Porta Case.
I enjoyed the first game in this series, liking how it mixed mundane police work with a mad sci-fi story. But Detective Minerva Case has a different setting and period.
The year is 2068 and the world has a cyberpunk look to it all. There have been a series of murders for you – the detective – to investigate. It could all be linked to mega company Luna Corps, with a launch of its new AI called Minerva. So you go through a series of locations, taking in a street scene, heading to a massive office with computer servers, to investigate the leads.
Once again, the story is to be liked, as is trying to piece all the clues together with both evidence and narrative. There are two different endings to discover in Detective Minerva Case, with both having a dramatic ending. Be aware, the second ending has a bug where you have to change the language option to complete it for some reason.
Detective Minerva Case puts you in the first-person, working that perspective for the whole of the game. And it comes with basically two modes.
Firstly, you arrive at the crime scene and have to find several clues in the whole location. These normally consist of around ten to fifteen pieces of evidence that need collecting, with them hidden anywhere. They can be big things like a dead body that will give you a clue or the smallest item like a USB drive that dropped on the floor behind the sofa. You have to have your keenest eyes about you to be able to find everything, but it’s an enjoyable and addictive pursuit.
The second part of the game takes place at the police station. Here you are presented with a whiteboard, with all the evidence you collected. Your job then is to place the evidence in a linear timeframe, with things relating to the case in question. This can be a bit interesting, but also a bit of a challenge, as you take in all the clues and info that you have gathered. To help, you’ll realise that the clues are placed next to the board timelines in the same order as they should be placed.
Detective Minerva Case’s visuals are agreeably done, especially as you go looking out of the window, glimpsing the sun coming through, or admiring the cyberpunk cityscapes. There is a good range of locations as well, with a mixture of interior and exteriors. The attention to detail in the documents and computers is very good and cleverly done.
It means that should you have got on well with DETECTIVE: Stella Porta Case, then you’ll find enjoyment with Detective Minerva Case. As a piece of gameplay, it is both addictive and compelling, helped that it doesn’t outstay its welcome, running nice and short as you are able to complete things in just under an hour, grabbing 1000 Gamerscore in the process.
Strange bugs and lack of challenge aside, you should enjoy the new stories found in Detective Minerva Case.
