“Just call on me brother,when you need an hand..We all need some body to lean on….”
Whilst the world and a good many Nintendo switch owners are having a great time and playing lots of cutesy new titles on their handhelds. There comes a time when many owners just lay back and think and dream on playing..”something just that little bit different”.
Well,there’s some very good news on the horizon and the arrival of a title that’s let’s just say..will make Mario run for the nearest bucket !
If any of you know of the movie Pulp Fiction,then you’ll have an edge and a deep understanding of the role of one Winston Wolfe. A character wonderfully played by actor Harvey Keitel with a job as the films fixer.
If you don’t know it by now,then Hell on Earth, you most certainly will do by the time you play and get into this game !
You see,the fixer really works as a cleaner,and a cleaner for the kind of jobs that nobody really wants to end up doing. For when organised crime have their various problems with someone,and the discussion doesn’t end up very well,( i.e someone ends up DEAD!) Then dead usually means quite messy. Messy for the mob,messy walls,messy floor and in most cases,generally messy everywhere !
Bring in the fixer and the man to de-mess the mess!
Dispose of the messy walls,the bullet holes,the murder weapon,the evidence and top of the list ..dispose of the body !
Welcome to Body of Evidence then .. the game that puts you as a fixer with the wolf firmly at your door,as you face over 30 increasingly messy scenarios,and the faint hope that you haven’t eaten anything beforehand,before you start playing it !
This composition,or in this case decomposition,kicks off with a short interlude with your character walking down the aisles of a train carriage,and what seems to be a flashback moment where you end up waking up in an apartment to the phone ringing. The mysterious voice on the other end of the phone call alerts you to the sudden state of your surroundings.. There’s blood on the walls, furniture tossed about and a body on the floor that needs quick attention and quickly moving.
Cue the games tutorial and the start of many scenarios,where you must totally transform your surroundings into a clinically clean environment by removing every single shred of DNA evidence,against the clock and before the clock hits 0 and the cops arrive.
Naturally though,there are a few tools at your disposal,for your disposal. The scrubbing brush for pools of blood and blood splatters. The sweeping brush for areas strewn with broken glass and other particles,and a palette knife for filling in bullet holes on the walls.
The pick up hand mechanic is the most used and most important thing. Moving furniture and removing small pieces of evidence is one aspect.Trying to lift a body the correct way is another story.
Developers have pretty much highlighted,that the game boasts an advanced body hiding mechanic with ragdoll effects. So it’s more on where you grab a body and the positioning than just picking something up and expecting it to drop where you want it to.
When it comes to one mission requiring you to place a body in a cylinder no wider than from shoulder to shoulder,you soon realise that it’s not all that straightforward and science and the law of physics really starts to come into play.
As you can tell from this far in the review,the game mainly plays on black humour and on a topic that most developers won’t have at the top of their lists.
As missions progress,the tasks in hand get more complex and more tools and chemicals come into play. Making it far trickier to get the jobs done in the allotted time allowed. Locks need to be picked and dried blood stains on materials require soap,that needs to be found as each bar used depletes pretty quickly.
Each job needs to be completed quickly and success is governed by a percentage rating based on two specific factors. Body removal and evidence. A high percentage will give a job success and unlock the next job on a large map,with the story narrative pushing at the beginning of each new job and also to certain objects found in each collection of rooms. The twists and turns finding that you have to do dirty jobs for the cops,as well as the mob!
Body of Evidence is a macabre and very dark game,that I was expecting to fail quite miserably. Graphically,it holds up pretty well and each job has plenty of objects clearly defined and quite easy to make out and spot.
On a clinical examination aspect being crucial to the general gameplay,the game is quite solid and the tasks,however dark,have a good deal of realism attached to them,with enough variety to make each job feel new and strangely interesting.
No matter how stomach churning the content can sometimes be,the cleanup and disposal objective is often oddly and worryingly gratifying. From putting bodies into a drum and then applying an acid bottle,up to (or should that be down?) to a situation involving body parts,a kitchen blender and a flushable toilet! It’s clearly aimed at the mature end of the games market and is clearly much better for it.
Only downsides are the fact that once you complete a job at 100%,then there’s no real reason to go back and replay it,and the music is dark,brass infused and not really memorable.
Still at $8,it’s good value for money and worth adding to your collection,if you fancy quick plays into the dark and unsettling.. Bags already included !
Thanks to Empyream / No gravity Games for the code.
