The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief, Episode 1 (Xbox360) Review

All abooooard!

Nordic Games GmbH brings a thrilling new episodic adventure to the Xbox Live marketplace with its newest point and click adventure, The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief. The game is split into three episodes, with the adventure beginning with The Eye of the Sphinx.  The game begins in the fashion 0f an old school murder mystery show, complete with beginning credits rolling as you are given a sweeping view of a dazzling Orient Express chugging through the countryside.

You play as Constable Anton Zellner, a Swiss policemen tasked with assisting French Inspector Legrand transport the Eye of the Sphinx across your country – whether he likes it or not. You see, the Eye of the Sphinx is part of a matched pair, but the other Eye was stolen in a brazen robbery just days before. Who is responsible? Many suspect it is the work of an infamous master thief called The Raven. How could that be, though, when Inspector Legrand killed him years before – or did he? Though Legrand is reluctant to accept the aging Constable Zellner’s help as he sets a trap for the thief, Zellner is determined to do his duty – and perhaps find a bit of spotlight as well.

Accompanying Zellner and Legrand on their journey are a medley of characters who keep things interesting with their various idiosyncrasies. There is the famous mystery novelist (a favorite author of Constable Zellner’s), and her traveling companions – an assistant, who is accompanied by her young son, a precocious young boy named Matt. There is a somewhat gruff doctor, as well as an odd young violinist, a baroness and her butler, and a professor who doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the theft of the Eye (which occurred in his very workplace). You’ll spend plenty of your time in The Raven conversing with each of the characters, hoping for clues and a bit of story advancement to point you in the right direction.

Like most games in the point and click genre, the gameplay in The Raven consists of a lot of exploring your environment. You’ll need to search every crevice of every area (sometimes multiple times) in order to find the items you’ll need to advance in the game. There isn’t anything that makes items that can be interacted with distinguishable from anything else, so you really do need to explore every nook and cranny. If you get stuck, there is a hint system of sorts. It doesn’t really point you in the direction you need to go, rather it highlights all of the items that can be interacted with in a given area (what to do with them is still up to you to figure out).

Even that hint will cost you, though. Each time you use it, the hint feature costs you ten “adventure points”. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem for most, as you always have plenty to spare – but if you’re the type to strive for the high score, using up those points will affect your detective score at the end.

The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief plays out like a standard point and click adventure, with players scouring the environment in search of items to use to advance the story. Like most games in the genre, the story takes top billing – and it’s an interesting one. The tale of a master thief and a simple constable – along with so much more – really serves well to get players hooked (and keep them that way). It’s worth playing for the story alone, but if you aren’t a fan of the slower pace of adventure games, you probably won’t find anything to change your mind here.