The Last Express (1997 Video Game)
10/10
An Adventure Set On the Last Orient Express in 1914
8 August 2006
Set on the Orient Express in 1914, this game is from the beginning completely different from anything you have seen before.

Through the story, you are led by the young American doctor, Robert Cath, who is urgently contacted by his old friend, Tyler Whitney, to join him on the Orient Express, crossing Europe from Paris to Constantinople. Robert, being assumed as a fugitive and wanted for mixing up in an exchange of fire with IRA in Ireland, accepts his friend proposition for escape. If only he knew then what were Tyler's reasons for going on to that train...

Game starts at Gare de l'Est, East train station in Paris on 24th July, almost a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Our hero, to avoid the police, reaches the train in the countryside little after the departure with a help of a young motorcyclist. His first goal is to find Tyler. There's where you step in.

The graphics of this game are unique, process used to input live actors into the games, known as Rotoscope, was used. The results is realistic animation, and the feel that you are on the train. Hand-drawings of train, rooms, made by the pictures one of the last remaining trains, off the track in Athens, which crew visited.

Voice acting is fairly good, there is no lip synching, but voices fit extremely well to the actors, even if most of them weren't given by the people who were used in Rotoscope process. Languages spoken on the train are English, French, German, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Arabic. Cath understands first four of those languages, so the subtitles appear in the lower part of screen (except for English).

Music, the strongest point of this game thought by many. Original soundtrack was composed and orchestrated by Elia Cmiral, famous Czech composer. Music is mainly inspired by romance, mystery and sadness of the game. Violin play is extraordinary. Music fits extremely well into every aspect of the game.

Story, dialogs - absolutely remarkable. There are wealth of dialogs to be overheard, and the story will surely not leave you melancholic, as by the end you will understand the other part of the story that evoke on the beginning, with many questions and historical lesson.

A game you should definitely play.
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