while it lasts, which is about an hour and a half.
If you've ever picked up a kid's magazine at some point in your life, chances are you've already played Interpol in some form or another. Basically, Interpol is a game that consists of a series of themed images (the themes representing locations), where you're given a list of objects to find within the image in order to finish the level. There's a time limit, which consists of a lengthy 30 minutes, including a limited amount of hints (which are less like hints and more like a gimme), along with a few hidden bonus objects for different uses.
Sure, that paragraph makes it sound pretty lame, but in reality I found it strangely addictive for the hour and a half that the entire experience lasted. Yeah, it's pretty short, and at $10 I think it's ridiculously overpriced, but I sat down and played the main game beginning to end, and then delved into the multiplayer a bit all in one sitting. I even went back to a few stages later on and tried to get thru some areas without the use of hints (which really are like cheating), and I'll probably finish up that goal at some point in the next week or two. Still, do I suggest picking it up? Probably not.
Interpol is a type of game that I've seen more of lately, something that I imagine is going to appeal to that much desired "casual" market of game players, something that Microsoft has been desperately trying to appeal to for the past year or so. For that reason alone is why I suspect we're even seeing the game brought over to XBLA, considering that the game has already seen releases on various game download PC services like Big Fish Games, so it's not exactly a brand new title. This shows in the controls, since it's all done with a pointer that you use to click the objects, controlled by the analog sticks. You can opt to zoom in to one setting by pressing X as well, which you will need to do for certain objects, particularly ones that are covered by shadows.
In an attempt to give the game some replay value, each level is littered in objects, so whenever you play a particular board again you won't be looking for the exact same objects every time. This cuts down some on the memory factor, but more often than not half of the objects are going to be repeated (this was the case when playing online), so after a bit it will become easier for players to simply remember the locations of everything, and absolutely breeze thru most levels.
Speaking of online, you can pair up with up to 3 additional players online, and it works well enough with no real issues of lag that I could see. Still, it's not exactly the most engaging multiplayer experience out there, and while it's ok to kill a few minutes with (and a fairly easy way of knocking out some achievements), it's not going to be something worth picking up the game for.
There's a story involved here, revolving around the title villain named Dr. Chaos and three of his associates. You take on the role of a James Bond style agent that has to track down clues in various cities across the world. You slowly nab each of the villains, but all the story is told thru text after each stage, and the story itself is pretty boring and is there simply to move you from one puzzle to the next. I guess I should give the developers credit for trying to put something together for a bunch of image puzzles, but if the story were completely missing it honestly wouldn't matter much. The game itself is played out over a series of locations with three or so smaller locales within each city. Basically there are three to four puzzles for every stage, and then the occasional bonus puzzle that ends up being a bit harder than the regular stuff.
So yeah, I actually enjoyed playing Interpol while it lasted, but I honestly can't fathom spending $10 on it, especially when you compare that value to other things available on XBLA. If you enjoy these types of puzzles, it'll be right up your alley, but don't expect to get a whole lot of use out of it whenever you finish the main game. There's a paltry inclusion of two bonus puzzles that consist of finding the differences between two pictures, and the online component doesn't add much to the mix outside of being able to finish the puzzles a little bit faster than usual. Still, for the type of game it is, it works fine, and there are no technical issues to complain about. Definitely not worth the asking price though, so just be aware of what you're in store for before you plop down the 800 spacebucks.
