Detective games test your ability to investigate and solve problems. Use your investigative skills to solve mysteries, escape from haunted hospitals, and crack cold cases like the best detectives.
Here are the 5 best Detective games to play on PC in 2022.
1. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
This is an open-world style environment where you have very little guidance on where to go or what to do. You are left to your own devices and to progress in the game. There are a number of puzzles that you must find yourself and pretty much solve with no aid at all. Some of the puzzles are pretty hard to even locate. All of the puzzles are solved by using paranormal abilities such as sensing where objects are in the world or assembling a timeline of events of the past.
This was my favorite gameplay mechanic in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, you essentially have to work out the order of events that led up to the murder of a character. This is done by seeing small memories throughout the world and then just ordering them by assigning them a number by walking up to the memory. This really makes you think about the events which have taken place, and some of them can be quite shocking!
The graphics in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter are absolutely gorgeous, easily one of the best-looking games out there at the moment. The game runs in Unreal engine 3, and the developers have really pushed it to its limits here. There is a wide array of graphical options in the menu, allowing you to customize it how you want. All of the graphical elements are perfectly designed. Sunsets, water reflections, foliage, all of it looks almost has a photographic realism to it.
Plot-wise, this game has a very interesting tale to tell; I have to admit, it took me at least 15 minutes or so for me to really understand what was happening but after that, I was fully immersed and engaged in the story. You will see plenty of twists and turns right until the final credits.
2. L.A Noire
L.A. Noire is a detective game, simple as that. If you're looking for another shoot-everything rampage game like GTA just because this game is made by Rockstar then this is not the game for you. Sure there is shooting, but you won't be allowed to kill everyone in sight, running people over will affect your case rating, etc.
Personally, I love the setting of the game, the late 40s jazz theme mixed with golden age Hollywood as well as a classic noir feel makes for a great mix, but while the storytelling is good, it's not all there. The story feels a bit like it's jumping around without finishing everything off, Rockstar gathered enough story for a movie, but not a 20-hour game.
Because of this, you will be left with extra things that feel like they are just there to fill up an hour of your time and parts of the story that are never properly concluded. This being said, the story has some great parts towards the second half of the game and does a great job 80% of the time, however, the ending will feel incomplete.
It's fun to drive around and using your siren to move people out of the way is great. The car chases are exciting at first but end up being repetitive, as with all the chases. Shootouts feel this way too and there are one or two that will feel boring. The combat tends to feel stiff from time to time. For an open-world game, it is very linear and the free-roam mode itself actually takes some working out to access. Street crimes are fun to attend to and interrogations are challenging. The clue-finding in the game is brilliant and walking around the crime scenes never gets old although you will quickly work out the set structure to find all the clues.
3. The Wolf Among Us
"The Wolf Among Us" is a typical Telltale adventure game: a well-told story, cinematic presentation with excellent voice acting and highly stylized graphics, lots of choices that seem to have an impact on the story (but actually don't), annoying quick-time events that are meant to create an illusion of immediacy, and an outdated game engine that causes problems for some players (but thankfully worked fine for me). It's 100% what you would expect from a Telltale game at this point, they seem to stick to their formula almost religiously.
The reasons why I enjoyed TWAU more than other Telltale games, were the setting and the story. The setting is based on "The Fables", a series of graphic novels around fairy tale characters who had to flee their homeland, and now try to make a living incognito in Manhattan. I did not know the Fables before, and I liked how they put an interesting spin on characters that were otherwise done to death, and often pretty boring to begin with (especially in their sanitized, sugar-coated versions from the ever-popular Disney movies). The Fables are anything but sanitized. There is no clear line between "good" and "evil", many characters are disturbed or broken, and they all try to survive - often by desperate means - in a seedy environment far from home. Their stories tackle topics like murder, violence, blackmailing, dependency through debt, prostitution, suicide, drinking, and more.
One of my main complaints about Telltale games is that they rarely introduce me to new, exciting worlds. They usually just rehash franchises that everyone knows already. I don't really need the thirty-somethingth Batman game though, I'd rather discover and explore something fresh. And since I did not know The Fables before, TWAU provided that for me, and I enjoyed it a lot.
4. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
Aside from sentimental reasons, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is probably my favorite game of all time. I'm a bit biased as a big fan of the original novels and short stories, but I'd bet it's still quite good to anyone just looking for a great detective game.
It is genuinely one of the most faithful adaptions of Arthur Conan Doyle's work that's out there. This is one of the few instances of Sherlock Holmes related media that doesn't try to "do its own thing" with the IP too much, instead just adapting it in a way that makes a very enjoyable game
Overall, one of the best if not *the* best detective/investigative games out there. There's a great combination of objective facts and more circumstantial data that you have to put together yourself in order to reach conclusions. Evidence is gained naturally and it never feels like you're clicking everywhere or just walking around. Additionally, while you can reach the wrong conclusion at the end, you can't really mess it up beforehand in a way that I always hated (for instance in LA Noire you can frequently mess up entire cases by misreading a character model's facial expression).
5. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
This game is incredibly silly. It is cartoonish. The legal rules and courtroom proceedings are entirely illegitimate and are a horrible indicator of how the court works in the real world. For example, prosecuting attorneys will insult the judge, commit assault and battery in the middle of court very often without punishment, and collect the evidence themselves without any police chain of custody and without registering the evidence with the court ahead of time. Characters even have cartoony non-serious names that just scream "this game isn't taking itself seriously."
However. I absolutely LOVE this trilogy. The silliness - though a bit over-the-top at times - fits in well with all the emotion and "heart" of it. It's so peculiar because the game is all about applying logic and reason to solve mysteries and/or bring the truth out, but if just solving a murder was all it was, then this series wouldn't be as great as it is. I quickly began to care for each of the important characters in the game, and although some cases are less important to the overall storyline, even those "lesser" cases are enticing and introduce new characters whom you will actually see pop up again later as witnesses and persons of interest in later cases and games in the series! I actually found myself getting misty-eyed every case or so, depending on the events.
Despite the goofy qualities of the Ace Attorney Trilogy, the investigations and trials are no joke. I actually had to use a walkthrough on at least half of the cases at some point. I wish I didn't need to, but it did not make me like the game less as it is just so good. With each discovery, you make as you go along and the way the investigations and trials play out, I found myself sometimes actually gasping in surprise and going wide-eyed at the revelations.
>>> Read more: Top 5 Best Open World RPGs To Play On PC In 2022
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