Culture

Platforms: IOS, MAC, PC, (3.5/5).
A trend is developing, and it's kind of frustrating. Twice this year I've had to admit that - despite proudly displaying the juvenile shades that are kind-of-sort-of crippling the industry's artsy potential - I really appreciate it when games like Bulletstorm and Mortal Kombat take it to such an honest, self-aware degree that they come out the other end. Hector: Badge of Carnage: We Negotiate With Terrorists lives up to its double-colon title, opening with a puzzle that involves you taking mouthwash from a tramp to treat the halitosis of an obese prostitute so she can entertain a client, leaving you free to steal her garters to use as a replacement engine belt. Yeah. But that's really entertaining, goddamit.

 
Hector is a by-the-numbers point-and-click adventure game, but a polished one with an endearing and original aesthetic and tone. You play, shockingly, as Detective Inspector Hector, who wakes up at the start of the game in a cell in his own police station, uncertain of the location of his pants. The game has an understated 2D cartoony art style that does a good job making you feel the gross, greasy aura of the characters and their habitat; the British town of Clappers Wreake. The puzzles do require thought, but they avoid the cheap pixel-hunting that so many hard-core adventure games dissolve into. You rarely reach the point where you simply combine everything with everything else in every single way; the puzzles never become that obtuse.
 

It's the combination of the puzzles themselves, the style of the game, and the great writing that make Badge of Carnage special. I described one puzzle above, and they are all pretty much on that level. Solutions make a scary amount of intuitive sense and are pretty hilarious. And you know the best part? At least one of the female characters is voiced by a dude in a way that sounds a lot like the mother in Life of Brian.