This might sound intriguing until you factor in how tired the whole “Murder in New York” thing is and that you’ll be staring at essentially immobile renderings as backgrounds. There are some sporadic animations, such as moving clouds for ambience and even clues at some points, but don’t expect any people, papers blowing in the wind or anything else that’s indicative of the Big Apple. The stark design makes clue finding and puzzle solving as simple as it was back in the day. Just wave the cursor around until a name pops up, and then put the pieces of what you’ve already seen together.

The issue is that many of the puzzles are more trial and error than deduction. For example, jars and pots are on the ground with a bag of dirt across the room. Instead of referring to any clue about how much dirt or which one of the pots to use, the player must take each pot individually and either fill it on the spot with dirt or grab another handful to include at the puzzle’s location. Sounds simple, but you can only carry one pot, and the jars can only be filled twice. Okay…all I have to do is try each pot empty first and then—wait…it just works empty? That’s pretty non-sequitur if you ask me.

I could forgive that puzzle because it wasn’t too far into the game, but later on I encountered another challenge that worked the same way, and another later still (also with pots!). I thought police work was analysis and reasoning, not taking wild guesses. Other puzzles are also frustrating, but for another reason entirely. Everything is laid out in front of you, and you can’t leave a location until something is accomplished. This should make things easier, but when you finally arrive at an answer, it doesn’t make much sense. For example, you’ve located a bottle in a pipe teeming with roaches. Do you use the long wire you found outside to fish the bottle out? Or find a Zippo, fill it with gasoline, crumple some papers up and burn the suckers out? Granted, the latter sounds more fun, but it’s still a little nonsensical for police work.

It remains to be seen if the old-school adventure game can live again. I know that some of our favorites employed some of the same techniques as Art of Murder. Day of the Tentacle was all pretty random (anyone remember the beauty contest?). Yet DOTT played to the subject material’s strengths, whereas Art of Murder mocks problem solving by forcing you to stack pots in no particular order and push chairs around a room that has floor boards that don’t squeak. If this sounds like the work of the FBI, then welcome to the team, but having played though this game, I say we can never go back to the good old days. Read the autopsy below for more information.