Hector: Badge Of Carnage – Episode 01: We Negotiate With Terrorists Review

Game: Hector: Badge of Carnage – Episode 01: We Negotiate With Terrorists

Developer: Straandlooper, Telltale Games

Publisher: Telltale Games

Available on: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, PC and Mac (Reviewed on PC)

Ever since there have been video games, there have been adventure games. It started with text-based adventure games, where you had to type into the machine what you wanted to happen, then, with the invention of the mouse and better graphical capabilities, we were able to get our hands on point-and-click adventures. This is the genre that spawned classics we all know and love to this day such as Myst and The Secret of Monkey Island.

As we’ve all grown up, so have the adventure games. To such a point where we get something like Hector: Badge of Carnage. An adventure game about a British cop with just about as much enthusiasm to his job as he has manners.

In a world where the only thing we seem to care about is the next AAA title with amazing graphics and a steep price tag, should we care about a hand-drawn game where the only input method is our trusty mouse?

Hector: Badge of Carnage is chock full of gorgeous hand drawn visuals which lure you into the story. Every area of the game is full of references, visual comedy and beautiful artwork, and that’s no mean feat considering how many different items there are to use, different places for you to visit and people to talk to. That’s before I start thinking about all the different combinations of items that you can put together, or not, as Hector will be the first to point out. The other plus side of the hand-drawn graphics is that, while they do look visually impressive, the player won’t need a top of the range PC just to run the game. As long as they have the ability to load up a website, they’ll be able to play Hector: Badge of Carnage.

When you wake up in a prison cell in your underpants, you know you're in for a good day.

The gameplay of Hector: Badge of Carnage, just like any other point-and-click adventure game, revolves around the player solving a series of puzzles by finding specific objects in the environment and using them in a very specific way. The charm of Hector: Badge of Carnage lies in Hector himself, who will complain at you and put you down at every opportunity but, instead of making you hate the character, it only serves to make you enjoy him.

You’ll do everything you can to see all of the ever more creative ways Hector will attempt to use to insult you and the people around him. It’s one of the only games around at the moment that it literally laugh out loud funny. Play it for five minutes and you’ll see why. The fact that Hector, as an Officer of the Law, wakes up in his underpants in one of his own police cells, is just the start of his long and arduous day.

Some shops are better than other. This just happens to be one of those better ones

There are a lot of games out there that deserve to be played, maybe they’ve got amazing gameplay, maybe they’ve got the best graphics currently available. Hector: Badge of Carnage is none of these, but it is a game with heart, with humour and with a main character that’s had just about enough of it all. There are plenty of games that look amazing and play even better, but there aren’t that many that will make most people laugh out loud at so many different intervals. For that alone it should be pretty high on most people’s wish list.

The game’s only downfall is one that plagues a lot of point-and-click adventure games on the PC at the moment. With the increasing amount of touch interface devices in homes, such as iPhones, iPads and many others, the point-and-click adventure titles feels more at home on one of those than it does the PC. If you have an iPad, get Hector: Badge of Carnage for that. If all you’ve got is an iPhone, however, get it for the PC. The gorgeous visuals are too good looking to be constrained onto such a small screen.

You can thank me later.

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