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An intriguing CD-ROM courtroom adventure, this casts you in a role of a
District Attorney in San Francisco who must build a case against James Tobin, a
well-known painter, who stands accused of murdering Zachary Barnes, co-owner (with
Tobin) of a hip art gallery. Your goal is to secure a first-degree murder conviction
(with a grand theft thrown in for a good measure) - anything less would be
considered a defeat. But, as you may guess, this is no simple task, for the shooting
can easily be made to look like an act of self-defense, and the witnesses are either
not very cooperative or not very reliable. The game is divided into two sections:
during the first, pre-trial phase, you will examine the evidence from the murder
scene, review the police interrogations of the defendant and the witnesses, and
conduct your own witness interviews, hoping to cajole or force out of them any helpful
testimony. You will gradually discover a fairly complex web of relations among the
main characters in the drama, plenty of possible motives, and at least a few plausible
crime scenarios. Furthermore, you will never be completely sure just who is telling
the whole truth: Tobin's girlfriend, who also had a brief fling with the victim? the
victim's wife, who seems almost too cooperative? Tobin's assistant, who appears to
know much more than he admits? The second phase of the game, the actual trial, is
where you must elicit the appropriate testimony from the witnesses (praying that they
won't change their stories) and undermine the strategies of the cunning defense lawyer,
all under the watchful eye of the local media, whose members will not spare you
withering criticism in case you blunder. You will quickly learn how crucial it is to
ask the right questions (even during the pre-trial phase): select a wrong approach,
and the witness will clam up, depriving you of a chance to get some helpful information.
You will no doubt be replaying the interview sessions over and over again, trying out
various questioning options in an effort to chart out the right path. The game
certainly boasts crisp, attractive photography and video; the acting is solid (which,
in CD-ROM game terms, means 'on par with your average daytime soap'); and piecing
together a viable courtroom strategy proves sufficiently challenging to keep a patient
gamer interested. But playing it over and over again takes its toll. |