Dollar - The Interactive Mystery

Dollar -
The Interactive Mystery

Release date Germany: 03/2007

Developer: Pan Vision

Publisher: EMME Deutschland

Game language: German

USK: 12+

A review by slydos 13th April 2007

Scandinavian mystery novels are extremely popular in Germany. They belong to the few and far between sociocritical contemporary literature: melancholic, psychological, poetical, cold, intensive in relationships, politically motivated, moral.

Liza Marklund is one of meanwhile over 100 Scandinavian authoresses and authors and she produces best-sellers. Contrary to the more common police novels she normally writes from the view of a journalist: Annika Bengtzon. Not so in her first interactive mystery story with the title "Dollar". Her leading actress this time only takes over a supporting role, while this time the gamer takes center stage in the investigation as chief officer of a homicide squad in a spectacular murder case.

Story

Elizabeth Lindberg was murdered - in the gent's restroom of the Grand Hotel! The intro camera pushes its way through witnesses, policemen, onlookers and staff members, to the crime scene, where we sneak a peek of the dead woman in a pool of blood. While passing through, we could catch some scraps of sound and voice from the environment. Anxiety rules. But not only, because a murder has happened. The dead woman was a V.I.P., since she was a model and hence part of the illustrious and glittering show world on the one hand and the heiress and C.E.O. of a big enterprise on the other. The eyes of the public will now in particular focus on us and our investigation.

Mission

The players' role is quite realistic as chief of a Stockholm homicide division, as she delegates preliminary work to the staff, receives results, coordinates the operation and supervises questionings. She keeps contact with the press and the public prosecutor's office, acts as pressure compensation between the big boss and staff and concentrates on the analysis of evidence. Only once she visits another crime scene herself -, yes, there will be more than one. At first sight this may sound like a boring desk job, because there's no running around and you don't deal with the more tangible things such as looking for clues and observations. Instead you however enjoy the benefit of the 'Big Picture', i.e. to be able to sift through all relevant information and make decisions.

The game must be categorised as police adventure like CSI or Law&Order, but contrary to these it dwells far more on the psychological context and emotions, the human factor so to speak, if we exclude the last Law&Order game "Criminal Intent". "Dollar" requires empathising with the involved people and piece for piece unearths astounding motives. It's interesting, how the characters judge and critizise each other, their relations, their anti- and sympathies, interdependencies, intentions. Liza Marklund has actually got the hang of it and demonstrates, how to skin the onion layer after layer. And she does it with logic and suspense, so that we are exposed to surprising twists time and time again, kaleidoscope-like rearranging the participants, their motives and relations, and the valuation of this all, and take our own prejudices constantly to test in a playful way. Have I aroused your curiousity?

Tools

We finally end up in our office, which will be our domicile for the next few days. Before we can familiarise with any other thing however, we must take the time for a short phone call with the Detective Chief Inspector, a 'grey eminence', which we enscribed brief and meaningful with "Q" on the telephone. Two more numbers are stored there: the one of journalist Annika Bengtzon and the other of Angela Nilsson, the public prosecutor. After being taken to task by our boss, we finally can take up work.

Leftmost we find the office of forensic technician Jimmy Dessler, where we get information concerning all current evidence investigations. Rightmost we find staff member Kristin Falkenberg, who is mainly engaged in the examination of particulars, surveillance and witness questioning.

All data converge at our laptop by emails. New emails or telephone calls of the two coworkers pop-up as symbols in the upper left screen corner. If we want to reread their messages later, we use the laptop. Other tools are a wall map, where we must chart all information about witnesses and suspects, as well as their relations among themselves. The relevant locations are marked on a city map of Stockholm by coloured pins.

Extremely interesting, but not accessible until a series of investigations, is a 3D-crime-scene-model in which we can re-enact the course of events using a time-scale. Victims and witnesses move therein as tiny figures according to the existing information. Bit by bit the chronological order is completing and sometimes this representational form sheds light on further causalities and the truth content of the statements.

Handling

"Dollar" is a mouse-controlled game, the ESC-key brings us to the main menu.

A detailed, illustrated 13-page online help is represented by a small symbol in the upper right corner of the screen. While the small manual informs us about the more general procedures and possible bugs, the online help supplies exact information about handling and controls. However the whole thing is simpler than the substantial online help is suggesting.

Inherently all functions can be performed comfortably, I only found it somewhat tedious to rubber-stamp the innumerable documents, because it only functions in 50% of my first-clicks so I had to use the stamp a second or third time on the designated document area. We must provide all evidence, mentioned locations and people with a stamp, otherwise nothing will happen. For example particulars and id photo of witnesses only show up after we issued an order on verification of particulars by stamp. And only if these data is acessible, we can let the witnesses be heard. What do we need for that? The stamp of course!

If we decide to look for witnesses by a newspaper call, initiated by Annika Bengtzon, we will get hints from the outside too. We can take notes in all documents in own words on a note block attached to each individual evidence.

Two things did not run so fine: after some cutscenes one couln't stamp the shown documents (at the beginning of a new day) since they disappeared immediately. Secondly one couldn't save the game in form of savegames, so that there was no possibility to jump back in the game. At the end of the game the only automatically stored savegame disappears, and one must restart from the beginning. However this is not that serious as the playing time is only about 5-6 hours. The price performance ratio is with almost 30 Euros only satisfactory. The option menu is limited to volume and sub-titles. "Dollar" ran properly and has low minimal system requirements.

Graphics/sound

Beside the manageable office and its tools, presented in 1st-person-view as still image, there is is not much graphical change except talking to our two coworkers, watching the rare video scenes and interviewing the witnesses both in- and outside the office. Questioning is always done by Kristin, we only determine the technique of asking. The graphics are of the same standard as those known from CSI or Law&Order. It's mediocre, but not worse than the aforementioned. I would have wished for more and accessible scenes.

Lip-synch is missing, unfortunately our characters usually start moving their lips and gesticulating before the voice output could be heard. At the end of a statement or a sentence the camera always switches to Kristin, so that we at least don't catch, if their mouths move on. In a game, that places special value on psychological backgrounds, I would have expected more than avarage facial expressions and body language. Mimic and movements could have been by far more situational. It's not enough to let a witness cry leaned forward or show the macho posing in a space-taking casual way.

Dubbing is however good. Professional speakers were engaged e.g. Detlef Bierstedt for our faithful Dessler. The localization is overall excellent. All game-relevant texts were translated correctly. Overlooked foreign sentences or other linguistic bumps don't exist in this game. Normally that would go without saying, if you won't be taught worse all the time by other games.

The title song "Dollar Queen" is not only a catchy popsong but also bears a direct reference to the story of the game, as we will find out later. Liza Marklund wrote the lyrics together with Tove Alsterdal. The only sounds I noted were those of arriving emails or the ringing telephone.

Puzzles

In "Dollar" we do not have to solve typical inventory puzzles neither secure fibers or analyse speeding tickets. There are no complex or overflowing evidence inventories. We must convict the murderer, that's our task. This includes detailed document study as well as fast job delegation. After that we direct our particular attention toward the results and their effects on our chart of relationships, which we should complete as fast as possible (arrangement and affiliation of victims, witnesses, kinsmen, suspects).

Beyond that we can make ourselves useful by avoiding to drive people's meters over in the red during questioning, as long as we are expecting some feedback. Very helpful is to watch the oscillating display showing the witnesses' state of excitement before and after our questions. If we exaggerate, for example insult the wittnesses, then the interview may be terminated earlier. We have to try again after a certain waiting time.

The witness questionings are no continuant meetings either. Only 3 topics are allowed and if there are more, we must decide, which topics have priority. If we have sufficient evidence, we can apply for arrest or house search by agreement with the state attorney - but don't forget to stamp! The end of the game has come, if we can convict the murderer without doubt and get a confession. "Dollar" is easier and shorter than each individual Law&Order or CSI game.

Result

The game honestly took me by surprise and was quite absorbing. Despite the many repetitive routine tasks I felt required to rethink backgrounds and networks of relations. It is quasi a crime novel for nonreaders, even setting the bookmark by itself independently! Who has only few points of contact with books, will walk through "Dollar". There are emails, graphic overviews, dialogue situations. You determine the game speed and can at least affect the plot in some way. Nothing else is what the box predicates: "Dollar - An Interactive Mystery"!

Of course 5 hours is very short and we must only carry out simple, repetitive manipulations. But thereby we can fully concentrate on the interesting story and its solution.

For some time we Germans are bombarded with so-called 'strong' female super-detective-characters (on TV) representatively standing for us, unresting fighting against gender stereotypes, while their male counterparts - if they are at all permitted to enter this genre as newbie - are allowed to be quite nutty, hoggish, pale, ugly or simply short, fat, boring and balding. Interesting in this context the number of actually convincing female characters in "Dollar", while the male characters are a bit stereotyped this time the other way round : -). Hey, the Swedish egalitarian model has actually made it into the adventure genre now! Keep it up, Mrs. Marklund - count me in, if it's not a one-off!

Total rating: 64%

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)

Minimal system requirements: