The Hollywood Murders reminds me of those old text adventures like Zork, where you interfaced with the game through pure imagination and commands. However, the Hollywood Murders does have a visual aspect to it. For example, if you pick up your gun, you see a picture of a gun. When you turn on your radio, you see a radio.  Even though the pictures look like simple Clip-Art photos taken from who-knows-where, it is enough to immerse you in the game itself.

The plot of Hollywood Murders is very similar to the movie Black Dahlia, which was a moderate hit in theaters.  In this game, you play Jim Novak, a private investigator based in Los Angeles who is investigating a murder.  It looks like you follow the typical “hard-boiled” detective genre conventions: The seedy office, the cute secretary out front, and, of course, the gun.  In other words, you’re Sam Spade. 

Gameplay is the typical of the text adventures with the “north-south-east-west” commands and the like. Of course, you have the items that you carry around that will eventually come to good use later, etc.  In other words, all the role-playing elements are here.  As usual, all the strategies apply, the looking at everything, the feeling of helplessness, until finally the “a-ha” moment occurs and you solve a puzzle, generally leading to even more puzzles. 

Give it a shot, and you won’t regret it.  You can download it here. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.