There is something strange in human nature that makes the concept of mysterious murders the climax of intrigue for us. It is the simplest explanation to why the crime genre enjoys so much success in popular culture and why it is present wherever you turn. Among the most read books of today are Nesbø’s and Larsson’s crime stories, and on the TV you can watch the trillionth CSI season followed by Narcos, True Detective and the like. Hidden Agenda is a sort of successor to the great horror Until Dawn. Its creators noticed that people played that game by listening to the advice of other people on the sidelines when making crucial decisions.
In the game these people are becoming your teammates and you do not need five extra gamepads, but everyone can play the game using their smartphones. You cannot get into the game whenever you want but in the main menu when the whole team is “recruited”. This does not mean that Hidden Agenda is a mere multiplayer game because you can play it alone in a regular story mode. But if you want the full experience, a competitive mode that requires at least two players is intended for it. In the competitive mode, some players get a secret assignment to sabotage others to end the story in favor of the bad guy. Sabotage is usually carried out through takeovers, i.e. theft of decisions. If you do not agree with the decision chosen by most players, you can place a veto and decide for them. However, you can only do this if you earn a takeover, i.e. if you are fast when the game asks of you to find traces, or to perform an emergency QTE sequence.
This concept is not particularly complex, but that is the point of Hidden Agenda. Someone who has not played a video game in his life can understand its gameplay. Viewed from the perspective of accessibility, such gameplay design is a hit. Of course, with experienced gamers, Hidden Agenda will be a somewhat idle experience with its gameplay mechanics. If, for example, you are concerned that you have very little control in the Telltale games, or that everything in Heavy Rain is in QTE sequences, then Hidden Agenda is not for you, because you do not control the characters here, you just choose the course of the action.
Since the game is consciously presented as an interactive film, it is not wrong to expect a quality story. It’s a good thing because in most segments Hidden Agenda has a tense and intriguing action that keeps a hold on you until you have completely figured it out. It is short in duration, just an hour and a half per transition, but it has an attractiveness factor when it comes to repetition of chapters
The story revolves around a serial killer who terrorizes the police by setting up civilian traps. You follow the action with two characters: Becky, a police officer, and Felicity, an attorney, and most of the time investigate the identity of the killer. However, the real drama follows when the killer realizes that you are on the run, and you suspect who he might be. There are a few endings in the story line and it is fascinating how the game provokes you to outsmart a cunning killer – if not at the first play, then in the next.
Although Hidden Agenda works well as a crime game with a good interactive play, it is obvious that the game’s creators are not superb dramatics. An introduction to the story could be more elegant instead of immediately serving a pile of characters whose names you can’t remember, let alone discern who is who. Time jumps and jumps between the past and the present are also of no help.
The biggest sin is that there are no repetitions by chapters. The biggest impact on the end of the story have the choices you make in the last 15 minutes, but the game does not give you the freedom to repeat only those 15 minutes to see a different end; instead you have to do everything from the beginning. The slightest sin is that certain choices in the game are imprecise and even contradictory. For example, you choose “save a person” option and your character is killed.
Hidden Agenda is uses the same starter as Until Dawn, which means that the graphic presentation is on an enviable level. The characters’ faces are extremely detailed and the acting is very convincing thanks to fantastic facial animations. Although the animations are top-notch, they are not without a fault because in some parts of the game the transition from one face animation to another is noticeable.
However, such things are acceptable for a 20-euro experience, which is what Hidden Agenda costs. The value of this game is in the story you can share with other players, but also play alone. This is not about a top-of-the-line narrative, but as a crime thriller it is fun to set up challenges. In most detective games, the killer is a static figure, but in Hidden Agenda it is one of your teammates. In this way, the element that was previously reserved for social games was successfully inserted into the world of video games, which is why some omissions in this case are more easily ignored.
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