So, here’s a fun fact: I love me some Hercule Poirot. Death on the Nile may not be my favourite story, which I’ll go into in a minute, but I’m a big fan of the moustached Belgian. I started listening to a collection of short stories during hiking, and suddenly the miles were disappearing. They might get a little formulaic at times – and Poirot is borderline a magician in some of them – but trying to predict the twists and then being either smugly right or wonderfully wrong is great. So I’ve been harbouring a growing interest in adaptations of the world’s best detective.
This is the second Death of the Nile adaptation I’ve gone through, the first being the slightly wonky Kenneth Branagh film. It’s an odd duck of a story, really. Half of it is spent listening to wealthy socialites bicker at each other. Things don’t really kick in until the final third of the story, where the title actually comes into play. So I wondered how the move to the medium of video game would liven things up. As it turns out, the main effect of the transition has been to stretch the story to breaking point so it can crowbar in gameplay elements where there’s no room for them.
The Little Grey Cells
There’s a temptation when playing an adaptation of something you love to start pointing out the differences. I will try and control myself, though I will say that Poirot in this Death on the Nile seems to owe something to Kenneth Branagh, rather than the books. He isn’t an old man with a head like an egg. Either way, we open in a nightclub in 1974 (well after Poirot’s canon death but ignore that), where we meet a wealthy woman, Linnet Ridgeway, and two lovers, Simon Doyle, and Jacqueline de Bellefort. Linnet ends up stealing away Simon, and Jacqueline ends up stalking them both onto a cruise down the Nile. Tragedy follows in her wake.
Poirot, meanwhile, is wrapped up in it against his will. Still, there’s lot of work here for a detective. Which is good, because Death on the Nile‘s detective mechanics are actually pretty sound. It’s generally split between poking around crime scenes, and interrogating witnesses. Doing so nets you clues that go against a ‘Mind Map’ – a big spider’s web of intrigue. Once you’ve got a pair of clues that match, you can make a connection between them. Gather enough clues, rub them in witnesses’ faces, and you can then start working your way through the more complex threads. Like ending a mystery by putting all the events in the right order.
I rather enjoyed this bit, though it’s missing something. Stakes, most likely. When you find a connection, it’s basically a multiple choice answer with no real punishment for failure. I wanted a bit more detective work like I found in the epilogue, where you get a full on corkboard and string. Still, there were sparks of enjoyment. What is strange though is Death on the Nile‘s insistence of adding in other puzzles to the mix. At one point Poirot has to fix a jukebox before someone will talk to him, for instance. The puzzles are nice – it’s the sort of ones you’d find in one of those ‘escape the room’ style games – but they feel at odds with the detective elements.
Mon Dieu!
It gives the feeling that the story is being stretched out; blockaded by unrelated puzzles. Speaking of stretched out, Death on the Nile has found room for a secondary story and protagonist, Jane Royce. A private detective whose friend is gunned down in an organised hit. Jane sets off around the world to track down the killer. An odd choice of story, given it has little in the way of intrigues, or detective work beyond cracking codes. It comes complete with a suite of irritating stealth sections. It does boast some key narrative choices, which is good, though they funnel down into just two ending choices.
The side-story isn’t helped by some slightly wonky writing. The non-book characters feel a little underdeveloped, as we whip from location to location at a break-neck pace. It has hiccups too, like when Jane asked someone if he knew a murdered man, when she’d just been told they were brothers. Overall, the story is fairly cliché. The voice acting doesn’t help either, with frequently stilted delivery. Like individual lines were all recorded out of order. Graphically it’s a little rough too, especially the animations. Everyone is very stiff. Still, the views are nice. The Egyptian setting, and the opulent vessels, are captured well.
But I’ve been putting it off for long enough, so I’m going to let my Poirot love bubble over for a moment. In terms of faithfulness to the story, it does rather well in the Poirot half. All the characters from the novel are here, with the appropriate personality flaws, save for Colonel Race, who is replaced by Jane. Yet Poirot himself feels smoothed over, somehow. His voice actor does a reasonable job, but he carries nothing of the charming arrogance that makes the character, nor the undercurrent of darkness towards criminals. He also has no real foil. Jane spends the whole time fawning over him, or coming to the same, effortless conclusions.
Death on the Nile – Poirot On A Rack
The result of all this is a singularly confusing experience. There are moments when Death in the Nile does shine, even in its new bits. It makes a mystery out of glass being added to a caviar verrine, for example, and it requires actual detective gameplay. But then it goes through a lengthy section where we stumble aimlessly across the rooftops of Cairo, looking for one interactable door. It’s bits like these that make Death in the Nile feel bloated. A classic Poirot tale that keeps getting interrupted by a considerably less interesting one.
Perhaps I’m biased. While I’m definitely more of an Orient Express man, my whole reason for playing this game was because I wanted to be in that world. And it provided that, in a way. The key moments from the story came across well, as we were involved in uncovering them. But those bits were already created by Agatha Christie. So the question is, if the Christie elements were taken away from Death on the Nile, would it still be worth playing? Sadly, I think it’s a no, meaning all the new bits can do is get in the way.
