The Shivah (2006)

I'm playing the Kosher Edition, which means it's got much nicer art, new music and apparently re-recorded VO though it sounds like the exact same readings to me (maybe they've been remastered? There are still a few pops here and there and some heavy microphone breathing, but from a quick YouTube comparison they do sound better balanced). It's a fun idea - a noir mystery with a grumpy rabbi acting as detective. Apparently it's a pretty short game, too, which is no bad thing. There are a few little irritations, like the egg-timer cursor and the character portraits, neither of which I like in my adventure games, and the way the music volume dips up and down for dialogue, but I'd probably be less picky about this stuff if I were playing it as someone's debut game with scrappy production values back in 2006.

The beginning is a little slow - do some googling, have some conversations - and I think I found that the conversations dragged a little more than they should because they centre around your relationship with the victim and a big falling out you had a few years ago, which the game refuses to give you the details of, so it kind of feels like you're just clicking through at random rather than making informed decisions to dodge a cop's suspicions or the widow's anger. But you're at the murder scene relatively quickly, which is good. 

Finished! It's fun and rather silly, and the puzzles are fair. I did get stuck once, but I should have figured it out, really - you get given someone's business card with their email address on, so you can log out of your own email and log into theirs, guessing their password with info from the Jewish Google search results on him. I'd gone so far as to consider emailing him, but not logging in as him which is a reasonable detective move to make.

Anyway, like I say, it's a bit of an odd situation because this was a small freeware low-budget debut game and in that context it's really impressive. With the new swanky graphics and music and considered as part of the Wadjet Eye Games pantheon (especially seeing as it has cameos from later WE games in it now!), it's tempting to judge it a little harsher on some stuff, like how the puzzles are all rather mundane, and the tone veers a bit between Sin City style ultra-hard-boiled noir pastiche where you're growling at assassins as you hold them over subway tracks, and sincere religious and ethical discussions. It feels a little odd when the protagonist falls into a rant about inter-faith marriages being a danger to the Jewish people at the end of the game. The one thing I do feel confident in saying is that Dave is the one bad voice actor in the whole thing, thankfully he only has about ten lines! Otherwise, it's all better than Syberia, say, despite the low-budget technical issues.

Rating: Okay.