Still Life
9 / 10 (2005)

8 / 10 Played in 2015

A gruesome Point and Click Adventure. Play as young FBI detective Victoria and investigate serial murders in Chicago. Collect evidence and follow the bread crumbs. The parallel story of the grandfather as a Private PI is brilliant.

The puzzles are well thought out and included some real tough ones, do not let this put you off because it is better to use an online guide than to miss out on this story. Some trigger zones are surprinsingly tiny, patience.

The Art and 3D spaces are superb and have aged well. The Voice acting is very good and the audioscape was spooky as hell.

[Lament]
It seems every point and click has it's own ideosynchratic GUI issues, and this one is no different. I got used to it. [/lament]

Now I am off to play Still Life 2.
Hooray !

This point & click adventure with the mix of Horror & Crime Drama is excellent, Your playing as special agent Victoria Mcpherson who is trying to solve an important murder case that later on involves her grandfather Gustav Mcpherson (The Past) & I'm going to post my thoughts on why I thought it was good.

Pros:

1. Hard but rewarding puzzles (I sucked at the puzzles)

2. Interesting Story

3. I liked the mechanic where you use mouse clicks to interact with the dialogue instead of choosing words

4. Decent Voice Actors

5. Suspenseful Music

6. Beautiful Art

7. Interesting Set Of NPCs (I hate Browning)

8. The game does a good job of acting like a real agent like for example using tools to pick up blood & hair for example

Cons:

I don't have any cons to say about this game but if your offended by gore, nudity or women being murdered then this game isn't for you & also don't listen to the metacritic reviews because most of them don't know what a point & click game is. (Ok I have one con, some of the puzzles were ridiculous to do like for example the cooking puzzle which doesn't reward you at all for solving it)

Having liked Syberia (you have to like a game if you've bought multiple copies over the years), when I saw the Still Life trilogy in a bundle (Post Mortem, Still Life, Still Life 2) a few months ago I decided to pick it up.

While it's taken me a while to get to this game (not thinking, I played the second in the series first), I'm glad I finally did.

Still Life eventually ends up following the lives of two characters, with the real focus on one, Victoria. While at times she seemed like a bit of a teenager (attitude), I actually enjoyed her character pretty dang well. The other character is also interesting, and ... well, spoiler, look forward to playing as him when I get around to Post Mortem.

Some of the puzzles are rather challenging, and I'll readily admit that I opted to just look at a guide as time went on; I'm not as smart as I once was, and really I was just digging the story. I have no shame in admitting that.

I look forward to playing the rest of the games in this series. Honestly, Still Life gets 5 of 5 stars.

On the surface, Still Life is just another modern rendition of the Jack the Ripper mythos, told on two timelines. Under it hides one of the most engaging serial murder thrillers ever written for a point ‘n’ click adventure game, completed by a bit cruel, but somewhat realistic puzzles.

I’ll be honest: Still Life is my favourite adventure game. It was developed by Microïds, a French company known for their unique titles, and uses the same gameplay system that was introduced in Benoît Sokal’s Syberia. This system is also its main drawback, since it is designed for very slow play. Everything will seem sluggish, even for this genre: walking speed, dialogues, even the user interface. It’s not as bad as the old FMV adventure games, but it’s up there.

On the other hand, all the other areas in game design are almost flawless. The main character, Victoria is a little bit clichéd tough-girl FBI agent stereotype, but she quickly evolves into an interesting character. Throughout the game, she is placed into a lot of neo-gothic scenery that just oozes atmosphere, all to emphasise the urban fantasy theme of the Jack the Ripper style killings she is investigating.
The story has another side though: we learn that these killings copy events that already happened in the 1920s in Prague, and Vic’s grandfather (the protagonist of the quasi-prequel, Post Mortem) was involved in them. His segments not only offer insight, but serve as a contrast to Vic’s world with its washed out tone and almost cruel grittiness.

The plot may have sort of a fantasy vibe to it, but the gameplay doesn’t. Progressing feels quite natural and realistic, but not without obvious adventure game puzzles like the clock at the morgue or the cookie recipe. Some of them may be a little too cruel, but the reward is always worth it… even if the ending won’t give the satisfaction of closure one may expect– unless they are accustomed to modern French thrillers.

I'll start off by telling that Still Life is the second game of a trilogy. Post Mortem, introduces one of the protagonists, Gus McPherson but playing the prequel is not mandatory to understand what's going on, although it can help in understanding some of the background story. This game itself ends in a cliffhanger, so playing Still Life 2 is necessary to complete the story.

You play as Victoria McPherson who is a young FBI agent in Chicago with a reputation for ignoring procedure. She's investigating a series of brutal murders. When visiting her father during the holidays, she has a peek into her Grandfather Gus's trunk. He was a PI in the 20's and it seems that one of his last cases bears an eerie similarity to the one Victoria is investigating now.

The game allows you to use forensic tools such as dusting for fingerprints, using a revealer spray to show cleaned up blood stains, taking photographs and looking for bits of clothing or hair left on the scene but it's used sparingly. Some of the puzzles definitely require the use of a walkthrough and keep in mind that the game switches protagonists on occasion between Victoria and Gus.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=671555250
While it may not be one of the best or innovative adventures ever, it certainly is one of my personal favorites.

A point & click adventure which falls into the category mystery and crime. You are Victoria, a FBI agent who's investigating a gruesome serial murder. 5 victims, and beside being all brutally murdered there is another thing they all have in common, they are all women. It is your job to catch the killer even if the investigation takes you 70 years back to the past.

If you like this kind of adventure game then Still Life is definitely worth a look. It has all the necessary suspense and atmosphere to keep you on the edge of your seat. The puzzles are mostly straightforward, but some of them can be really frustrating. I suggest you having a walkthrough ready when you play this game.

Quick review:

Short Verdict: A point-and-click adventure with some strong and weak points. Overall, it was more frustrating and lame than fun, so ultimately I can't really recommend it. If you already have it (and SL2!), you might as well try and see for yourself. But I did think of abandoning the game quite a few times during it.
IMPORTANT: The story ends with a huge cliffhanger, which I hope to be the starting point in Still Life 2. It doesn't even feel like an ending to a game, but to a chapter. So don't get/play this one if you don't plan on buying/playing the sequel.

Pros:

• Although unoriginal, the story is interesting
  
• It was nice changing back and forth between the two ages in the game
  
• Some characters are interesting and well-developed

Cons:

• They've missed the mark on difficulty--puzzles are either ridiculously easy or insanely hard. Either way, it's never rewarding
  
• Lack of BGM on most scenes is lame
  
• Most of the game consists of moving back and forth to solve boring puzzles... and moving back and forth is a really slow process
  
• Some characters and dialogs are stupid
  
• The ending is really frustrating--seems like the end of a chapter
  
• Dialog system makes you click for each topic... but there's almost no topic do choose from. Basically, sometimes you have two options: left click for important dialogs, right click for idle chat. But most of the time it's just the left-click. So instead of going smoothly through the dialog, they make us click every three phrases just to pretend we're actually doing something

Bought on / for: Arctic Bundle by Bundle Stars, for an average price of US$ 0.36. For that much, yeah, it was worth it, but I wouldn't get it outside of a bundle.

Good gameplay for an adventure game. If you have an investigative mind you'd definetly love this game. 9/10

Still life is a very dense and deep detective point & click adventure, to be considered kind of a sequel to post mortem, as in this chapter we play as Victoria McPherson, FBI Agent and Gus McPherson's niece (the main character from post mortem). We start the game straight with a crime scene and you have to do the classic actions: talk, examine and so on. It's interesting the accurate level of interactions, when you need to use forensic tools. Unfortunately the title is old so it isn't updated or anything. Fortunately I didn't have any bad issue with my laptop (which is quite new: i5, nvidia 840m, win 10 64bit) and I've been able to play without any trouble such as crashes or freezes.

• STORY. Victoria McPherson is an FBI Agent working on a serial killer case. Reading her grandfather's diary (Post Mortem's Gus McPherson) she will realize he worked on a case where a serial killer was operating with the same Modus Operandi as her Serial Killer. You will both control Victoria and (through a sort of flashback) her grandfather trying to solve both their cases. A small note: consider this title as a first chapter of a whole story, which is concluded in the second Still Life. I won't say more to prevent spoilers.
  
• CHARACTERS. I loved the characters. Each one with his or her own personality, all their dialogues are so credible, and they're well dubbed, I believe. A cast very well built.
  
• GRAPHIC. OK, the game is quite old so it's not a matter of resolution or shaders, but of visual aspect. All the scenarios are so beautiful and fascinating, with desaturated color tone that gives them a very dark aspect and creating an excellent atmosphere.
  
• RIDDLES. The game presents a nice variety of riddles that involve the classic interaction between items, a more deep and precise interaction between multiple items, scheme puzzles, lockpicking (very tough one, solutions in the web are wrong as well, I had to improvise in the last section), Verbal clues that hide codes and so on.

• Dialogues. when you're talking with someone you can choose with left or right mouse click to talk about the case or generic stuff... You don't get to choose the line parts like in old classic point & click adventure nor you don't see what you're about to say. It's not an important thing since you inevitably end up talking about everything with everyone but I kind of missed this option, as a Classic point & click lover.
  
• Resolution. Unfortunately the game has quite the age, you can't change any graphic detail, nor resolution.
  
• 4:3. Considering the age the other problem is the aspect ratio. Unfortunately it wasn't studied for 16:9 monitors.
  
• Speaking animations. I Have no idea if it's a problem caused by my OS (Win 10), the OS Bit (64bit), the modern hardware (Intel i5 + nVidia 840m) but when characters talk they move their mouth at the speed of light. literally. I can't distinguish the frames, they're super fast...

I love, love, and love this game! I probably played it several times already and don't mind playing it again.

It has great atmosphere with just perfect music behind it that made me really get into the story. Couple of times, it really scared me or had to cover my eyes.

I tought the scenery of Franch back in 1920 was beautiful, moreover, it was excitinig to actually played the Gustav part not just reading his dialy.

It was rather sad at the end of it, but with that included, I really liked the story. I recommend this game a lot!