If you haven’t heard of the upcoming adventure-thriller, Still Life you are about to, and not just from me. This new title has “Adventure Game of the Year” written all over it. And why not; after all it is coming from famed developer, Microids, already known for smash hits like Syberia and Post Mortum, and with talent like that behind the scenes, you are practically guaranteed a hit title.
Still Life opens with a brilliant cutscene full of style and mystery, complete with a rich and haunting score from the same musicians who created the stirring soundtracks for the two Syberia games. The movie is a jumble of images, snippets of a serial killer, an artist’s paintbrush painting what might be blood; it’s quite disturbing and sets the mood perfectly for what is about to come.

The game starts off with you playing as Victoria McPherson, an FBI agent who is called to a disturbing and very violent murder scene. You’ll engage in a few conversations before searching and collecting evidence around the area. In this way the game play out very much like the C.S.I. titles where you use certain investigative tools in your inventory to reveal invisible blood stains and swap liquid, hair, and fiber samples for research back at the lab. They even do a stylish recreation of the crime, or at least their theory on the crime, much like they do on C.S.I.

Still Life mixes crime investigation puzzles and techniques with traditional adventure game clichés such as item hunts and item manipulation. Early in the game when it comes time to leave the crime scene your exit is blocked and you must find an alternate exit. This sends on you a quest for a crowbar (assuming you didn’t stumble upon it earlier) to clear the back door.