Bosch's Damnation: Carol Survives the Winter!

For the first time in years I have no Kirkus books on hand, and I finished cleaning out the garage today so I decided to take a break and play the latest Carol Reed mystery. This one did not disappoint, with a nicely convoluted path through the game to the usual showdown conclusion and what I thought was an odd ending.

As usual, we get to see the beautiful city of Norrköping, Sweden, some really nice winter and nighttime shots, as well as the gorgeous countryside and, as always, incredibly messy apartments and derelict buildings. Thankfully, there are perhaps one or two fewer of these in this game, and plus, there's a nice little joke about them. One of the characters is making a computer game, and he writes about his players' possible reactions to scenarios like that.

 Winter Scene

Norrköping at night

Later on we find a really nice joke about Mikael Nyqvist himself. If you're a regular player of these games, as I would imagine a good 95% of the players are, it will be fun.

Of course we have the normal gameplay. I note that Nyqvist is still using the Wintermute engine to make the game and why not? It works perfectly for him and he doesn't need anything fancier. It's a slideshow with plenty of nodes to visit. We go from location to location, finding clues--usually by completing fairly simple inventory-based puzzles to uncover said clues. If you make sure you visit every node and sweep the screen you really won't miss anything. But the wandering, to me, is perhaps the most fun in the game. I get to travel around the environment, snooping into people's apartments and enjoying the scenery. I like that, and fortunately we didn't have to spend quite as much time as normal in the derelict buildings. Yay.

Carol goes through two seasons in this game--in fact I think it's the first time we've seen Norrköpping in the wintertime. Mikael takes the trouble to change the scenery in Carol's apartment to fit the season, another new feature in this game. Even if you don't do the tutorial, at the beginning you will get on-screen how-to-play advice. 

Here's a nice gingerbread scene for the winter

There are plenty of museums in this game. I presume some are real. The Swedes seem to go in for history quite a bit. (Yay!)

Here's a very nice church

The hint system is really good. One of the problems with the earlier games in this series was that you often couldn't figure out where to go next. The hint system solves that for you, and you don't have to delved into it too far if you'd prefer not to spoil the fun. On a couple of the more esoteric puzzles (although only one really stumped me, because I couldn't figure out the trick) you have a little question mark to click on that will give you the order of clicks you need to make. Really, the frustration has been cut to a minimum this time, but of course, only if you want that. Feel free to become as frustrated as you like by not using the hint system (in the upper left-hand corner of the inventory bar at the top of the screen). 

And for once--and this is a new feature in this game--when you need a ladder to climb onto something you will find it nearby, in the current location. In previous games we always had to grab a stepladder from some other location and lug it all the way back to the proper hot spot. It was silly and never made any sense. 

Of course we have the usual suspects who turn up in all the games: Bigge and Björn Larsen as Carol's extremely patient boyfriend Jonas. Both provide some comic relief, as always.

The usual suspects

I actually played the whole game in about four hours. I was a highly pleasant four hours. Would have taken me much longer but I shamelessly used the hint system, because I just wanted to plow on through it. 

I did have a qualm about one choice in the game. Carol finds a historically significant object, but chooses to leave it in secrecy. I understand that Carol has her scruples, but frankly, I would have given the object back to the world. 

That's actually one of the very nice things about these games. They appeal to women of a certain age (me) and they follow a fairly strict but quite nice moral code. In earlier games, for example, if Carol borrows something she makes sure to return it after she's finished using it. She's always polite, except when fighting villains. (After all, this is from MDNA Games--it stands for "Madonna" and I'm sure Mikael doesn't mean the pop singer.) Said villains, of course, always wait for the player to figure out what inventory item to use on them. You really can't get killed in these games (except for one of the very early ones as I recall--but the scene would instantly reset when that happened to give the player unlimited chances to figure out the puzzle). By now though, we know that we're going to encounter a life-threatening scene near the endgame.

And the scenery is lovely. The houses are messy. The people are nice (well, most of them). It's just an enjoyable time.

Have fun!