Brand im Hafen? Fire in the Docks

Brand im Hafen? (= Fire at the Docks)

Release date Germany: 10/2002
Developer: bvm
Publisher: Heureka-Klett
Language: German

Boxshots

A review by slydos 18th October 2002

"Brand im Hafen?" (eg. translated "Fire at the Dock Site") is a 3rd-person sleuth adventure, which is classified by publisher Heureka Klett as edutainment. Heureka Klett wants here, apart from their pure edutainment titles, e.g. current Mathica and Historion, to treat the band of general knowledge. "Brand im Hafen?" is the first game in a new line-up of the publisher and like Chemicus 1 and 2 produced by bvm. The target group are young people starting from 11 years and adults.

Story

Janny Paul has a vacation job in a storehouse for fish, which is in the harbour area of the fictitious German city Spitzbug. In the intro our leading actress gets a little off with her boss because of "dreaming during service" and leaves the storehouse irritated. A short time later she finds out from a running by bum (in the game always politically correct called "homeless people") that there is a fire in the storehouse. She turns back and actually finds fire remainders and a smashed window. Since she now must fear for her job, she doesn't hesitate to investigate the case herself, asking the people at the docks and keeping track not only of the arson but other criminal machinations too.

Installation/start

"Brand im Hafen?" comes on one CDROM with detailed German manual, in a beautifully designed box as always from Heureka Klett. But after the smooth installation of the approx. 600 MBs the problems began - I hadn't looked in the manual yet, and actually only wanted to test the game. Unfortunately only the credits ran off again and again with a click on the unusual main menu designed in superimposing sphere shape. Thus I had to go back to the manual and look up how to handle the main menu.

Here, as later in the game too, during inventory and dialogue operations, the developers conceived of something new. Whether NEW is always BETTER at the same time, one can doubt in this case confidently; the individual menu elements lie on top of each other in translucent spheres and are at the same time rotating laterally, forward and backward, as a function of the mouse movements. One must keep the left mouse button pressed, until the desired menu element is in the foreground. I will say it directly, you won't always succeed to select what you want with this method! And it does not become better during the game. One often believes to have the correct element in the foreground and then unfortunately opens the wrong menu! This control is innovative and nicely meant, but totally not in the right ballpark! The developers attached more importance on self-absorbing than user friendliness. Game controls should - after some time - vanish from one's mind into the background to make place for the actual game!

If you've found the activate button for the game, you may watch the felicitous intro, which, accompanied by exciting music, introduces us into the story and ends with Janny, going back to the storehouse to look at the fire site with her own eyes. Here we can start into the game.

Handling/controls

"Brand im Hafen?" is partly keyboard/partly mouse-controlled. Our 3D-character Janny can be moved with the arrow keys, the Shift-key lets her run faster. The developers paid special attention that Janny never runs into crates or other settings. But she however very often got caught on exactly these objects or on walls too, so that one must let her go back a step and then turn. Automatic avoiding and turning off in front of obstacles doesn't exist. To turn Janny is laborious, because it takes a really long time. In some places, particularly if you're trying to bring her into the correct position to begin a dialogue with another person, she begins to turn around continuously like a wooden doll in the rhythm of a Slow Waltz, which on the other side looks quite funny. The only help is here, to release her from this situation and try another approach.

As already suggested, Janny must be near persons or objects, to be able to interact. One recognizes the correct position by the lighting up of a status line at the bottom of the screen. An interaction is initiated with the Return-key. Some items can be taken up or manipulated this way, often also close-ups of certain areas are opened, where you can examine, manipulate or take up objects. Accompanied by Janny's comments a set of items finds its way into the inventory, which can be opened with the key "I". Before an object is finally stowed away, you can examine it or also directly use it. Here, as also in many other zoom views and all dialogues, the mouse is used. You can look at inventory objects in close-ups and rotate them with the mouse.

The developers call the interactive area, where objects and information are stored "Braintool". The braintool has, exactly like the main menu, the form of translucent, superimposed blisters or spheres and appears in the right lower screen corner when you begin a dialogue or press the keys "I" for inventory or "B" for braintool. Again you make your choice by simultaneously pressing the left mouse button and dragging the mouse, to get an inventory object or a character's picture into the foreground, in order to ask e.g. your current interlocutor some questions.

In conversations the possible topics appear next to a small picture of the person we want to speak to. If you drive the mouse over a topic, the question is already formulated at the same time in the status line and one can decide whether one really wants to pose it with a mouseclick. Here again the same difficulties as with the use of the main menu. One tries to select a special object or person from the disorder of superimposed, translucent objects or character graphics, clicks on the allegedly above lying and then often gets exactly the wrong thing.

If you've already talked to some people, a short summary of the facts appears in the braintool circle, which can be scrolled by mouse movements. Of course the braintool's circle shape often cuts off sentences on the left and on the right and one must be careful, in order to exactly jockey a sentence into the center of this circle, to see it completely - very tricky!

Apart from this whole laborious and pedantic control system there is however still light: the key "K" calls a clear map of the harbour area, where from the beginning the main locations are drawn in already. By mouse-click you can get here from place to place fast. In addition fast and without expenditure you can get to the main menu with Esc and can save, load or quit the game. With the selection of the Save sphere the current game is stored automatically. The saveslots do not seem to be limited.

Graphics

6 other 3D-characters populate the docks beside Janny. The movements of all persons, particularly the small gestures, are like real life and excellently drawn. There are few facial movements but the texts are very lip-synchronously spoken. Also the character design can please and looks realistic. I was only a bit irritated by the proportions of our heroine. I had the feeling, the arms or the entire torso were too long, and the otherwise absolutely beautiful friend Sue Li Bai from the snack booth has a bodybuilding neck.

Our young heroine with her short red hair reminds me of the heroine in the just played Swedish adventure game "The Diamond Mystery of Rosemond Valley". But Janny doesn't move within a pure 3D-evironment but in prerendered, really fantastic 2D-backgrounds. Even if it's not a superfine quarter, the pictures are an eye candy. And one is very pleased to find pure German locations with Euros and European Union and so on, where even the development company bvm perpetuated itself with an illuminated advertising. There are 8 main locations, which were divided again into many scenes and views, from the houseboat of our heroine over a tattoo studio up to an old bunker from world war II.

Unobtrusive, suitable changes of view make the investigation of the area still more interesting and give a movie-like feeling. Most locations are accessible from the beginning. Unfortunately the scenes are, as so often, not animated by other NPCs. Of course this would cost more, but with a game price of 49 Euro one could also expect somewhat more. Animations, e.g. smoke or blowing flags are economically used. Besides there are also now and then some marvelous animation sequences at certain key points.

Music/sound/language/texts

During the whole game much importance was attached to genuine and suitable, never exaggerated soundscape. The music supports likewise atmosphere and tension. The dubbing is high quality too, close to the characters with professional speakers. Graphics, movements, sound and speech are just right - watching and listening simply makes fun. The texts refer to the actual Here and Now and let the gamers sometimes smile, despite the serious background story.

Puzzles

The emphasis of this very linear gameplay lies in the dialogue puzzles. I.e. we must ask the correct questions to the correct persons, in order to get ahead in the game. So there can be stops in the game, if you don't ask all questions. There are however no dead ends. Likewise it's without time-dependent puzzles, complex mechanical or switch puzzles.

The game also does without the popular prolonging-methods of labyrinths or sliding-puzzles and one must not go on long walks. In this absolutely nonviolent game there are no action or arcade sequences and no Game Over.

Besides we find a multiplicity of partly quite simple, partly somewhat more complex object/inventory puzzles. Objects cannot be combined but manipulated within the inventory. There are some very imaginative object puzzles. With one you need some skill and with the other imaginative power, everything is very logical and stands in direct connection with the story. During different coding puzzles one must also have good eyes, ears and a certain memory, e.g. when it comes to light signals or sound sequences. One should be able to understand a bit English too, in order to decode a message on the answering machine. The puzzles don't go beyond a middle degree of difficulty and offer entertainment for both, beginners and advanced adventure fans.

Edutainment elements

"Brand im Hafen?" is just as much or little a learning adventure as all other adventure games are. As in each "normal" adventure game concentration, perseverance, combination and memory are required and trained, but no special knowledge is mediated or obtained. There is also no knowledge data base or encyclopedia, like in special edutainment titles. In the manual is announced, that an evidence report after successful playing the game should be created as a PDF-file on the desktop, but couldn't be discovered anyhow. So "Brand im Hafen?" must completely face the normal competition within the Adventure genre.

Result

"Brand im Hafen?" (= Fire at the Dock Site) has a good (but no nerve-racking, according to Heureka) crime story and convinces in the representation. Positive also the puzzle design. Background and port environment are well met. It is one of the few German crime-solving adventures and therefore recommendable to fans of detective and crime stories in any case. However controls and handling are laborious, even frustrating. With 12 to 14 hours play time it's relatively short and with a price of 49 Euro the cost/performance ratio nevertheless lags enormously. Who (in spite of shipping costs from the US) wants to save some Euro and gets well along with English-language games, should consider "The Diamond Mystery of Rosemond Valley" or the "Nancy Drew" series as alternative. The successor of "Brand im Hafen?" is called "Chaos at the Set" and will be released in a few days. It's again a whodunnit story, which takes place at the film location of a soap opera.

Rating: 70 %

Adventure-Archiv-rating system:

80% - 100% excellent game, very recommendable
70% - 79% good game, recommendable
60% - 69% satisfactory, restricted recommendable
50% - 59% sufficient (not very recommendable)
40% - 49% rather deficient (not to be recommended - for Hardcore-Adventure-Freaks and collectors only)
0% - 39% worst (don't put your fingers on it)