Review: Demetrios ‘The Big Cynical Adventure’
Demetrios ‘The Big Cynical Adventure’ is a point and click adventure game set in Paris. We follow our protagonist, Bjorn Thonen, a slob of an antique dealer who is robbed one night after coming home drunk. Forced to conduct his own investigation with the help of his neighbour Sandra, he ends up in a murky, mysterious affair.
I have played many point and click adventure games, in fact most of my game reviews here are in this game genre. I enjoy this genre of games because anyone can play them and usually have interesting storylines attached to them. Demetrios is probably the weirdest one I have played to date. To start, when loading the game, the first question you are presented with is:
“Do you like toilet humour?”
This question alone sets the tone for the entire game play. If you are wondering, for the full immersive experience, I chose ‘I love toilet humour, can’t get enough of it.’ I believe this choice affected some of the dialogue and playable options in the game, such as pissing in a police station plant pot and listening to Bjorn violently shit into his disgusting toilet. Demetrios is filled with toilet humour, so if you are a fan of this, you’ll probably enjoy this game.
The thing I liked most whilst playing this game was the dialogue between characters. Thoughts appeared in blue text, and conversations seemed realistic and witty. A lot of heavy dialogue games, such as point and click adventures, can have the dialogue be too formal and serious; sometimes that works for more serious games, but in other situations it draws you out from the immersive experience. Demetrios dialogue matched perfectly with the overall tone, filled with stupidity and humour. The art style is also unique, very colourful and obviously looks like it was drawn freehand. It was a nice change from the usual dark and finely detailed artwork that is featured in recent point and click adventures. I also enjoyed the various ways in which Bjorn could die within the game, and how all of the characters would be aware of his previous actions and that he had died. It was a nice twist to ‘failing’ that I haven’t seen in a point and click before.
My criticism of Demetrios (which I recognise is a personal opinion,) was that I wasn’t that excited by the storyline. To me, the overall plot I have seen before and lots of aspects in the game were predictable. An example of this is the revelation of the ‘bad guy’ … I predicted who it was right at the very beginning of the game. It just seemed too obvious, which you don’t want for the pinnacle revelation. The only part of the game that wasn’t predictable was the very end. I believe this predictableness of the game is either due to the fact I have seen this particular storyline used in a lot of point and click adventures, or it’s just a sign of poor writing. Another, small, criticism I have of the game (which I suppose could also be seen as excellent game design,) was that quite a few of the puzzles were very difficult to solve/complete and I had to rely on online guides a few times. This could potentially put some players off if they can’t solve a puzzle within the first hour of the game, or it could spur them on
In conclusion Demetrios ‘The Big Cynical Adventure’ is a unique point and click adventure game. Although the storyline may be predictable, if you are a fan of classic toilet humour than this game is definitely for you.
Review by Megan.(Played on Nintendo Switch)
