Item - Scotland Yard Detective

This book, written (rather surprisingly) by the man responsible for Casper the Friendly Ghost, is an entertaining read. Like quite a few of the other later entries in this series, it is well-written and educational enough to be enjoyable, but it is lacking in terms of gameplay. As shown by Julien Peter Benney's map, there are no backward loops in the book's structure, so you can't help but win no matter what choices you make. This trait (which is not unique to this volume) makes the already fairly insubstantial Time Machine gameplay even more pointless. Still, challenging gameplay or not, the series remains one of the more effective "edutainment" tools I've encountered.

More reviews by Demian

[Rating: 1/10]
[Recommended? NO]

While the promising potential of the premise in the Time Machine adventure "Scotland Yard Detective" is at least partially well-handled, there were particularly few redeeming components to save the quest from its prominent, pitiful weaknesses. It's unfortunate how the dangers are kept at arm's length even though the era's appealing visual-oriented choice-based design system fares well as far as reader immersiveness goes. The writing drifts from uninspired and clunky to very much aware of the narrative's potential, but - as with the majority of the books in the series - I think the adventure would've been more enjoyable had it avoided limiting itself to a single correct path; the inventory selection at the start is a bit arbitrary, I might add, and less seamlessly woven into the story compared to the databank, use of setting and handling of "characters". While the year it take place in may be 1905 AD, you won't find too many pointers suggesting a whole lot of imagination was put into the writing of this quest apart from what had commonly been covered in existing documents/research books or documentaries at the time this was written; though the research isn't exactly dated, per se, retrospectively there are parts scattered about here and there which feel a bit incomplete.

These books, which in all truth are merely self-indulgent and hard-to-find excursions into a different point in time, appear hyper-focused on their short-lived novelty value - a real shame, since the design and the execution of the linear quest itself isn't all that great to begin with. With the exception of collectors of the series or the most ardent of pseudo-history buffs, I'm afraid I can't recommend this title or any of its time-traveling trepidations. ^^

(Mysteriously disappears into the shadows.)

More reviews by Shadeheart