Cold Case Summer 3: Finishing

Had to take quite a while off from the game while I tended to some serious health issues and lotsa Kirkus books. However, tonight I have a book so bad I simply couldn't take it anymore, so I put it down and picked up the game again.

Mostly I was able to float along, meeting new folks, as Carol gives you pretty good clues at this stage about where to go next. However, I spent so much time away from the game that I did have to consult the hints more often than I would have liked. My first puzzle, back in the awful bunker, was backward from the way I interpreted it. I was able to figure out some stuff, but the final puzzle is still a mystery to me.

The clue says to use a specific card. I had already decoded that card. It worked on getting me to the last box to open (this game has numerous puzzle boxes), but that was the only number on the card. The hints gave a completely different number. I have absolutely no idea where it came from.

This time we had not one, but two attacks on Carol. The last one was placed, as usual, at the endgame. Figuring out how to get out of that one was a cinch.

Really, some of the items we're supposed to pick up simply require painting every screen, although I should have looked at one specific location that would have netted me a nice item. 

As always, except for the derelict areas the scenery was great. I especially liked the shots taken in Stockholm. Also, there was an odd wooden structure on a beach that we got to climb through. Also, one of the characters propositions Carol (she gets away quickly). Fun.

A wooden pathway

So it was a typical Carol Reed game. Mikael Nyqvist showed up in a minor role, as he sometimes does. Sadly, at the end of the game, there is a memorial to Randy Sluganski, who ran the Just Adventure website. Apparently he died after a 10-year battle with lung cancer. Sad, although my friends from Four Fat Chicks broke away from that site after some disputes with him that I never knew much about. Still, the site is running and active. I was a regular visitor on it for years.

A lovely night shot

Glad I finished the game! Wish I hadn't taken so much time away from it. At least I already bought the next game in the series (Bosch's Damnation). I have a few others I want to play first, but I'll get to that when the mood strikes!

This series always provides good entertainment without too much complexity. Fun enough for me!

Cold Case Summer 2: Poking Around

Just a bit of playing today, but I have delved more deeply into the puzzle. First, in wandering around the "Dead City," which is a deserted, half-built city for lepers (before they cured the disease), I saw colored rocks I could pick up and examine. There was a gray one and an orange one. I remembered them. No doubt they're clues to a puzzle. Of course they are.

Then I found a map that assigned colors to some buildings in the Dead City. I went back and looked, and those buildings have numbers. I noted which numbers went with the colors on the map. Now I have colors and numbers. This is just the kind of puzzle Mr. Nyqvist likes.

I remembered finding the black and orange rocks. I went back to places I'd been and looked for them. Sure enough, I found the black one. Kept searching and found a new one: green. Finally remembered where the orange one had to be and went back there. Yes, I found it. So now I have numbers associated with the colors and three buildings corresponding to three of the four colors, only missing the blue one.

I managed to break into Harri's summer cottage (where I found the aforementioned map). That was fun. As usual, you have to go back to other locations to find the clue or the item you need. There, the in-game hint system can be most helpful. Otherwise, you'd spend hours wandering around in complete stuckness. I'm still having fun, but I confess to using the hints on occasion.

(Also, I got into both the locked desk and the blue cabinet in the bunker. The keys are always somewhere else, but you find them. Remember where things were locked, go back and try them, and you're in!)

I noticed a neat thing last night, so tonight I went back to grab a screenshot. Look:

Whenever we move to a new location in these games, we get a sepia-toned photo of the place. This time, Mikhael has added color to the flowers in front of the building. It's like the Lost Crown. (Boakes  did a voiceover in one of the earlier Carol Reed games.) I'm sure it's a nod to Lost Crown. Nifty.

Anyway, next time it's back to the bunker, one of those derelict places Mikhael so dearly loves to put into these games. Fortunately we also get lots of lovely scenery too, but I gotta say, these trashed areas get a bit old. 

So I decided to do that tomorrow. I think I'll watch some Doctor Who on Netflix for now.

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Cold Case Summer 1: Back to Carol!

So at last I'm back to Carol Reed. These games are wonderful diversions for those of us who'd enjoy visiting Sweden without any language barriers, seeing some gorgeous scenery, and solving some moderately challenging puzzles. Plus, there's always an intriguing storyline. 

Along with the gorgeous scenery we also get plenty of derelict buildings and industrial areas, as well as messy apartments to explore. I always enjoy the apartments.

This time Carol investigates the murder of a man who was tied to the Olaf Palme murder (Palme was the Prime Minister of Sweden who was shot in the street in 1986. The crime was never solved.) An anonymous man contacts her for help, but he stays hidden. Next thing Carol knows, the police contact her because she's the last person he phoned, and now he's been strangled. 

As she pokes around, breaking into apartments, she (or rather, we) open coded boxes and discover clues that lead us closer to the man, dead for several years, who had been accused of the Palme murder. Seems this man was a lifelong friend of our murdered guy, Harri.

So far I've poked around in an old air raid bunker where there is a green cabinet I need to find a key for--there's a locked desk in Harri's apartment that I need to find a key for--and there's what appears to be some kind of colored tile puzzle in a very interesting, deserted area.

Also, to get to one of the new places on the map, Carol had to borrow Jonas's car.  It wouldn't start, so we had to find the items necessary to clean the spark plugs. That, as always, involves going back to another area.

There are some innovations in this game. For the first time, if you hit the space bar you can see hot spots. That's quite useful not only for finding stuff, but also for not wasting time on a scene that has no items or actions. Also, for the first time, there is a map within the larger map. We navigate to different areas in these games by going to the area map. When we learn about new addresses, these are added to the map, making it a nice dynamic in the game. This time there was a large area that had it's own map. No doubt I'll be back there, because Carol refused to enter the Hospital area of the place.

As always, we talk to people by clicking on dialogue written for us on notepads, like this:

The characters answer us in voiceovers, with subtitles (I always have these on but you can turn them off if you wish). And as always, the actors are amateurs, which I think lends a really nice atmosphere to these games. These folks aren't professionals, but they are sincere and really authentic. I like them.

Here's Jonas responding to a statement from Carol:

I figure I'm about halfway through the game, judging by the length of time it usually takes me to finish. Yeah, I could probably stay up and do the whole thing tonight, but I'll leave the rest to have some fun tomorrow.

Now that I have my Fusion virtual machine back, and XP is nicely updated, I've got all my games back! I bought this one just last week, and number 10 came out yesterday. I got that too! Not too difficult to get them into the virtual machine. I just click the link in the email that takes you to the download page, copy it, open the virtual XP machine, open Google Chrome and paste the link into the address bar. Voila! It starts downloading immediately. Takes awhile, but it's all there. I also wound up with a copy on the Mac side, but of course that won't open. Didn't want to get that but it's an automatic download. 

So, I've put Carol to bed until tomorrow!

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