Review for Murder Malady – A Carol Reed Mystery
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Let’s start off by congratulating MDNA Games, as this release is their twentieth Carol Reed adventure in twenty-one years! That’s an impressively punctual run of games by anyone’s standards, especially for an industry plagued with delays, setbacks and an overriding need to constantly impress with new tricks. MDNA have returned year after year with their established formula of photography-meets-storytelling, set in the same Swedish locale and with the same set of affable characters. Like a familiar television serial, Carol Reed has invited players to settle back and revel in the cozy dystopia of derelict Scandinavian interiors, sun-dappled abandoned quarries and deserted country lanes, all the while on the trail of murderers, miscreants and missing persons. So with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the latest Carol Reed outing, Murder Malady.
We start off as ever in Carol’s small flat in Norrköping, home to her impressive and steadily growing collection of classic big-box PC computer games. She has been approached by Immodia, an acquaintance who also featured in one of her earlier titles. This time she is in need of Carol’s help as her estranged mother has unexpectedly come back into her life. There is also a murder to contend with, as well as the unhappy mystery of a childhood all but lost to illness. The rather bereft character of Immodia herself cuts a sorry figure as she is interviewed by Carol, sitting next to an ever-present drink and wearing a discordantly jaunty hat in her stark room.
In addition to the main plot there’s a side quest early on in which Carol must prove her worth by solving a fictional murder to win the approval of a local detective who has information that may be of use to her. This case seems to have its roots in the historical fabric of the Swedish paper industry and has the ring of truth to it, but in actual fact seems to be entirely fictional. In any event, it’s a nice intertwining of story strands as the detective goes on to become important to the main investigation.
Despite the glum mood created by the trail of evidence which is uncovered – a sad tale that only gets sadder as you play on – Carol somehow manages to stay on top of things and maintain a detached level of dry humour towards the case. She is especially sharp in this particular narrative. In one of my favourite scenes she exacts revenge on an eco-saboteur who has casually asked her to dump some chemicals in a river for him! Indeed this is one of the key traits of the series: a nice balance of light and dark which prevents the games from becoming too depressing in tone despite the rather grim subject matter. At times some of the other characters don’t seem to react with quite enough passion for the sombre circumstances though, which may convey a lack of emotional depth. Instead they just take a little break until you hear from them again.
The challenges in Murder Malady will remind seasoned Carol Reed players immediately of her previous adventures. There’s nothing groundbreaking; everything could have come from the Handbook for Adventure Game Puzzles (if such a manual did exist, that’s what it might be called). However, the puzzles here are well-connected to the locations, and suit the mood and story. The majority fall into two types: hunting for clues to lead to the next locale, or looking for ways to open drawers and small puzzle boxes. To progress the investigation, you’ll have to find and open many of these boxes. Some require keys, and some have simple but strangely magical and improbable locking mechanisms that need to be decoded.
As it turns out, everyone involved in both the main mystery and the side quest are (or were) experts at secreting private items in plain sight, mostly in these small puzzle boxes. It requires some suspension of disbelief to accept that the boxes and notes have survived intact and undisturbed – often for well over a decade – even as the locations in which they are to be found have crumbled away around them.
The game controls are exactly like the other Carol Reed titles I have played. The point-and-click interface has only three types of active mouse pointers to contend with: an arrow to change the view or to move; a magnifying glass to examine things; and a gear cog to utilize an item. There’s also an inventory (which thankfully never gets too crowded) and a menu for saving and loading. To travel between locations Carol bicycles, and you use a map screen to move her around, with the names of places clearly marked. It’s all simplicity itself and designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, allowing the photographic backgrounds to make the strongest visual impact.
Just as with previous years, Murder Malady's game designer and photographer, Mikael Nyqvist, has done a superb job of conveying the beauty, tragedy and mystery of the Swedish landscape and townscapes through his lens. For each of the many positions that Carol can stand and look outwards from, there are usually four separate photographs looking east, west, north and south. This means there are literally thousands of intriguing images to click through, along with the close-ups available in some locations, full-length portraits of the characters you meet in their homes or places of work, and photos of the items you find. The scenery is often beautifully picturesque, or unexpectedly gritty and urban, and nearly always surprising. In this title alone Carol must visit a paper museum, several dilapidated houses, an abandoned dockyard, and a disused quarry, to list just a few locations.
If there’s a criticism of this otherwise enchanting photographic presentation style, it is that the places Carol visits are very often overgrown and require her to scramble through dense foliage in search of buildings and items. You frequently find yourself clicking through pages of indistinguishable images of trees and other greenery, or getting lost on the way back to Carol’s bicycle. Also, on a few occasions I found the skies just a bit too blue, as if the saturation had been turned up too far, giving them an artificial appearance.
With the minimal interface and static nature of the photographed outdoor locations (which are never animated) comes a distinct minimalism in the gameplay too. Gameplay is a case of mousing around looking for items buried in the photographic details of each environment. If you don’t fancy all this mouse work, then you can just press the spacebar to reveal the hotspots on each screen. My own compromise was usually to search for the clues myself but to use the spacebar when fairly certain there was nothing of interest (just to be sure!) because there are quite a few screens which are just ‘empty space’ on the way to somewhere else. Be prepared for not a lot to happen most of the time. Everything is very peaceful, very sedate, and maybe too calm at times. The most exciting action sequence in the entire game occurs when a watering can falls out of a tree. Other than that, you will be spending most of your time looking under rocks for things like mushrooms, keys or (you’ve guessed it) small puzzle boxes.
By and large Murder Malady flows nicely from one challenge to the next, although the inventory items themselves do seem to be randomly scattered across the map. The game taxed me just the right amount without holding progress up too much, but I did find myself stuck a couple of times. The conundrum that stumped me in particular was the metal puzzle box with the star and wavy lines – even when I found the supposed solution I still couldn’t work out how to open it. In these moments of gentle crisis, a quick check of the game’s excellent tip system will first tell you in which location you should consider looking – which is usually enough in most cases – and if not, a further click will then tell you exactly where to look and precisely what to do.
At times I felt the artificial nature of the puzzles a little too strongly: why does it have to be a specific knife from a specific location, for example, when any knife would do just as well in reality? I know, I know... this is how adventure puzzles work and logic goes out of the window! But there were at least three occasions where I’d been waiting for ages to find an object to be used for a certain purpose, such as a knife to cut something, and when I eventually found a knife and travelled back to the thing that needed cutting, I was told that ‘the knife is too blunt’. So then of course the quest becomes about sharpening the blunt knife rather than finding any other better knife (hint: have you found that razor strop yet?). This kind of thing did get a little old after a while, even when I was expecting it.
Musically I was impressed but had some reservations. I enjoyed most of the different pieces, which do fit together like a film soundtrack, but the contrast between music from different locales can be too strong and the segues too rapid. There are times, for example, when the music takes on a dramatic tone with dark synths and evocative soundscapes that can build some tension, in what is otherwise a distinctly un-tense game. Then in the next location you’ll suddenly hear a happy flute and acoustic guitar tune which sounds like it comes from a different game entirely. It’s as if the music is working overly hard to span different emotions. I would have appreciated more musical unity rather than a medley of different instrumental styles, and I think this would better complement the very tightly focused (no pun intended) visuals too.
The sound effects are pleasant enough but limited to rustling noises, birdsong and clicks for keys opening locks. As for the voice acting, it has never been a strong point of the series, although here the voice of Immodia is very convincing and she genuinely sounds like an actor; the male characters in complete contrast are distinctly wooden. Carol herself always sounds very pleasant but somehow odd – then you realise that everything she says is actually her inner monologue read aloud, so that oddness does make some sense.
This quirkiness runs throughout the entire game and becomes more apparent the longer you play: the people-less streets, derelict factories and empty museums, the weird little puzzles and eccentric characters. We never ever see a living being outside, nor do we see Carol herself (and attempting to picture her, as some box artists have done in the past, is apparently frowned upon by MDNA). Does Carol even exist or is this all some kind of experiment in an alternative reality, where awful things happen in beautiful places where no-one lives and strange music plays? Although I’m stretching my hypothesis here, it is quite possible that some people will find the characters, setting and atmosphere just a bit too offbeat, like a weird, forgotten European movie from the 1980s.
In the end, though – setting aside these minor criticisms and conjectures about reality – playing Murder Malady is a very enjoyable experience. It’s a gently pleasurable way to spend a few afternoons (maybe more), like doing a jigsaw puzzle or watching a favourite Christmas movie for the tenth time. If you’ve played a Carol Reed game before, you’ll feel right at home here, and if Murder Malady is your first it’s a very good place to start as the story is an interesting one. I have played several of Carol’s adventures now and already feel the pleasure of the familiar settings and bold visual style.
Looking back through some of Adventure Gamer's reviews of Carol’s earlier games, I noticed some criticisms about unsatisfying plots, rushed endings or strange choices made by Carol when conducting her investigations. I found the plot for Murder Malady to be one of its strengths, however. It is quite moving but also playful and it involves certain subject matters which I cannot recall encountering in a computer game before, such as animal rights and specific medical conditions which are very relevant to the story. Most of it is expounded through the notes Carol finds, so there is a lot of reading to be done – but personally I don’t mind that. There are moments when it can be hard to understand why she needs to carry out some of the tasks, such as helping her friend collect mushrooms, but then the whole experience is rather strange so I can live with these little asides too.
The comforting intimacies and similarities found in each game are not a detriment to the series, but are in fact one of the indications of the skill required in maintaining a level of familiarity whilst also making things exciting and compelling with each new title. The fact that MDNA have achieved this with the Carol Reed games for the past two decades, writing and selling them successfully, is a good indication of their long-term appeal. And Murder Malady (which can be purchased from MDNA) is yet another winner.
Our Verdict:
Murder Malady is tragic, amusing, oddly dreamlike, and a lot of fun in a gentle way – it’s another Carol Reed game, and yet another good one!
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