Category Archives: PC Games

Law & Order: Justice Is Served

Publisher: Legacy Interactive
Developer: Legacy Interactive
Year: 2004
Platform: Windows

The final installment by Legacy using the original Law & Order series, they finally cleaned up all of the annoying little design problems present throughout the first two games in the series.  Sadly, they failed to clean up all of the glaringly large design problems I outlined in my reviews of Dead On The Money and Double Or Nothing. In fact, they managed to get worse.

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Law & Order: Dead on the Money

Publisher: Legacy Interactive
Developer: Legacy Interactive
Year: 2002
Platform: Windows; Mac

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two, yet equally important, groups: the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.  These are their stories.

This premise for a one-hour television show has produced countless episodes, many Emmy awards, and two spin-offs. It was only a matter of time before it was transported to the PC. The flow of each episode is fairly linear (i.e. almost never is there a subplot) and is divided into concise chunks of time with few locations, thus making a port fairly simple, as opposed to, say, L.A. Law.

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King’s Quest III: To Heir Is Human

Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1986



Platform: DOS; Amiga

Sierra spent a little more time creating the third installment in the Daventry series and it shows. The increase in difficulty is quite welcome as well as a larger map and complex characters. To top it off, there is a plot. A plot that develops.

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In The 1st Degree

Publisher: Brøderbund
Developer: Brøderbund
Year: 1995
Platform: Windows, Macintosh

While I have yet to see an excellent game based in the courtroom (and, from the looks of things, I’m not optimistic), Brøderbund has at least provided us with an entertaining, user-friendly drama in this underrepresented genre. You play D.A. Granger, attempting to convict an artist of murdering his friend and business partner, an affluent San Francisco museum curator. The detective on the case has provided you with relevant documents and videos of her interrogations of the witnesses. Afterwards you must interview the witnesses and then go to court, hoping they won’t change their stories once you get there. Your goal, of course, is a 1st degree murder conviction.

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Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned

Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1999
Platform: Windows

Once again Jane Jensen and Sierra decide to completely overhaul the game’s design for the third adventure in this popular series. This time around we are given 3-D rendered graphics and gameplay from the first person perspective, and an increased difficulty level that doesn’t rely solely on finding the correct hotspot to click.

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Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist

Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1993
Platform: Windows, DOS, Macintosh

In the midst of creating two less than stellar Leisure Suit Larry games, Al Lowe decided to top it off with a crappy wild west story. The game starts out promising with a hilarious introduction, sung by Al Lowe himself, about Freddy Pharkas’ history and how he came to be a pharmacist in the western town of Coarsegold, California. But it doesn’t take long for the game to sink into tedium and endless babble intended to be humorous. Many of the jokes pay homage to Blazing Saddles, an obvious inspiration for the game, but aren’t delivered near as well. And the material isn’t fresh any longer.

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Dracula: The Resurrection

Publisher: Dreamcatcher
Developer: index+
Year: 2000
Platform: Windows; Mac; Playstation

Taking place seven years after the events in Bram Stoker’s novel, Jonathan Harker must travel to Transylvania to rescue Mina (who has been bitten by Dracula, apparently reincarnated) and defeat the vampire once and for all. An incredibly easy game that can be won in a day or two, Dracula: The Resurrection is intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying.

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