Agatha Christie The ABC Murders Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · August 1, 2024

Agatha Christie The ABC Murders Review, The ABC Murders is an adventure and investigation game adapted from the classic Agatha Christie novel. You are the famous private detective Hercule Poirot and, once again, you find yourself up against a mysterious serial killer who goes by the name of “ABC”.

Agatha Christie The ABC Murders Review Pros:

Beautiful cartoon-like graphics.
911.5MB download size.
Platinum trophy.
3 save slots and they are aptly called slots A, B, and C.
Subtitles on/off.
Invert axis and sensitivity sliders.
Own in-game achievements like a system called awards.
In-game cutscenes and character interactions.
Good voicework.
Brilliant soundtrack.
3D game world and you move around Interactive locations.
The left stick is to move and the right stick is to move the magnifying glass around and inspect the elements.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
The little grey cells are presented as a Web of questions and answers Poirot asks himself and they then join up to make deductions.
Auto saves regularly and shows an icon.
At times you will examine a particular spot of the location or character and here you move the cursor around until it vibrates and fills in a deduction or observation.
Multiple choice interactions.
Your notebook fills in details and clues as you discover them.
The objectives list will be updated when you finish tasks.
Ego points can be earned by acting like the true Poirot. (basically, answer and ask questions like Poirot would).
Interact with items and use the 3D viewer.
There will be self-contained puzzles to find and solve.
Very clever puzzles but they really don’t give you a lot to work with.

Agatha Christie The ABC Murders Review Cons:

Cannot remap the controls.
The characters are very robotic in their movements and facial expressions.
To me it’s weird hearing these different voice actors and to be honest they don’t feel like a good fit.
They have used the TV show version of Inspector Japp but not Hastings and Poirot is a bit of all version.
At times the game has a long pause until it says success or failure and it’s way too easy to accidentally back out.
Re examining anything also replays all the voices which gets a tad annoying and repetitive.
You don’t get a lot of guidance or feedback on searching with the magnifying glass.
Key sequences or scenes feel flat.

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