Hercule Poirot: The London Case Review

A Truly Puzzling Mystery

HIGH The cute, rotatable isometric perspective.

LOW A huge number of technical shortcomings.

WTF The occasional extremely sudden switches in location and perspective.

I’m not usually the type of person who complains about technical issues in videogames, but this principle of tolerance has a limit.

In the case of Hercule Poirot: The London Case, for instance, the technical and logistical problems are so persistent and so acute that one can’t help but feel the presence of the developer in every scene, at every moment, scrambling to create a coherent experience. I applaud their efforts, in a certain sense. They’re clearly passionate about the source material, giving The London Case the feel of a charming puppet show put on by some well-meaning children. But, charm can only carry one so far when the mystery itself, the foundation of the whole edifice, is so consistently obscured by so many shortcomings.

Let’s start this off with a compliment though. I like that the developers opted to create their own original mystery, rather than adapt a story from the Poirot books. Instead of starring old man Poirot, The London Case casts the detective as a fairly young person in charge of escorting a precious painting from Belgium to a London art gallery for display.

Naturally things go awry, leading to a winding, twisty series of mysteries within a larger mystery, but before all that, the player is placed in a tutorial level on a boat headed for London, allowing them to become acquainted with The London Case’s style and the rhythm of its gameplay.

Immediately, I was struck by the awkwardness of the presentation — the low detail of the environments, the stiltedness of the character animations, and whiplash transitions between scenes and camera angles during cutscenes and dialogue sections. That said, I did enjoy the way the player can rotate the scene at will like a little diorama, picking out clues through a shift in perspective. For some arbitrary reason the camera can’t be rotated when walking, which is frustrating given how slow the walk speed is, but… oh well.

The intro section also introduces other main gameplay elements that will persist throughout the experience, a mixed bag that began to truly sour for me as the hours wore on.

Broadly, the player is asked to inspect the environment and talk to suspects for clues (occasionally interacting with 3D objects to pick out specific details), then connect these clues and other info in a series of deduction ‘webs,’ solve point-and-click-style inventory puzzles, and present the correct evidence during deduction sections. Some of the 3D objects are quite lovingly rendered (such as the knife that the player examines during the first chapter) but The London Case seems to arbitrarily assign both the important points of the object that need examining, as well as the placement of these important points.

For example, an early chapter has the player examining a painting central to the mystery — arbitrarily, Poirot chooses to focus on the halo above the figures’ heads as a point of interest the player needs to select in order to advance. There’s no particular reason why Poirot would focus on this particular selection of the painting above any other, and moreover, there’s no reason why the player has to click on a specific section of the halo in order for the click to register. There’s a vague indicator when mousing over an area that contains an inspect-able point, but in my opinion it’s not enough to compensate for a minigame that often feels like padding, and an exercise in trial and error.

Speaking of trial and error, all of the deduction sections (both the webs and the presentations that the player makes to other characters) can be failed an infinite amount of times, with zero penalty. Also, it’s not possible to go through with accusing the wrong person, or otherwise come to incorrect conclusions.

I realize that the developers are drawing on a larger point-and-click style when it comes to this lack of fail states, but it’s a little dissatisfying to play as a detective when there’s zero opportunities for failure. In contrast, a title like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments allows the player to come to completely erroneous conclusions, while letting them check their answer if they’re curious. There’s something very flashy and satisfying about coming up with the perfect conclusions when the possibility of failure exists, which is something that rarely happens in The London Case given how generous the safety net is.

Instead, The London Case tries to offer a different avenue for player expression via the slightly nonlinear case progression, but more often than not I found myself wishing for a more streamlined — and coherent — experience.

At one point, Poirot recognized blue paint on an article of clothing, even though I hadn’t yet brought him to the room where the blue paint originated from! Other similar moments (such as a puzzle where the player is attempting to lure a cat out of a hole in a confession booth, which needs to be completed before Poirot is able to even able to talk to the cat’s owner about its whereabouts) suggest a story that has failed to take into account the true freedom required for such non-linearity.

The London Case occupies a strange sort of middle ground — it wants to facilitate player freedom, while at the same time telling a focused point-and-click story with little room for deviation. Perhaps it would have functioned better as a more pure narrative experience — a visual novel, for instance. It certainly would have been easier to avoid the technical hiccups in that case!

Rating: 3.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Blazing Griffin and published by Microids. It is currently available on PS5, PS4, Switch, XBO, PC, XBX/S. This copy of the game was via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Drug References, Mild Violence. The official description reads: This is a puzzle/investigation game in which players follow Hercule Poirot through a mystery involving a stolen painting. During the course of the investigation, players can examine corpses and hear dialogue about murder. One sequence depicts a character being shot (off screen); another man is knocked unconscious off-camera. One clue/item in the game is cocaine residue; text and dialogue discuss the negative effects of the drug.

Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Every puzzle and story beat has a readable visual cue as accompaniment, meaning that the entire game can easily be played without sound. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Certain functions are remappable. When controlling the game using a keyboard and mouse, the player is able to choose between two different key layouts. With a controller, the controls are not remappable: the left stick is used to walk around, the right stick is used to rotate the camera, X is used to interact with objects, Square pulls up the Objective screen, and Triangle pulls up the inventory screen.