The Fifth Sunday

You know, with a title like "Fifth Sunday", I was expecting some sort of liturgical drama with priests and/or monks and/or nuns preparing for Lent or something. But no, this turns out to be a murder mystery ... oooh, even better! Never mind the very odd turns of phrases: that's a translation thing, and I can overlook most of that for a proper murder mystery.

Hm. Okay, there's that silver-grey text playing over a blurry photograph. I remember that from "The Murder in the Fog", but this time around the chosen photograph at least has a broad expanse of dark down where the text begins to play, so it's legible. There's a lot of text and clicking before we get to a choice. Okay. And then ... uh ... it looks like the ending hits us as soon as we learn some concrete evidence about the murderer. I guess we're supposed to replay the thing over and over, gathering "hindsight" clues from each replay so we can finger the murderer right off?

So that's the puzzle. It means the detective must be the actual person playing the game, and no-one in the story itself can be expected to have all the evidence necessary for a proper denouement. And I could be okay with that ... if this were a format that gave us the text instead of playing it out. Or if there weren't all this incessant clicking to advance the text, perhaps. But I'm not clicking through stuff I've already read, multiple times, just for this. Well, okay, I did play through more than just a couple of times. But my point stands. Clicking seventeen dozen times to get through stuff you're not reading is tedious and supremely boring.

I also note that the progress of the game is kind of inconsistent. On one playthrough, our hero decided of his own accord to accompany another character to the bathroom; but on a different playthrough, we're given the choice of following or not. The only difference appears to be whether we tried to call the police or not; given that the call never goes through, I'm not sure why this would affect whether or not the player should have control over this decision.

And as a side note: I wonder if "the Yellow Hair" is indeed a blond man, or if that's just a variant of another term I grew up with: angmoh, or hong mau, meaning "red fur/hair" and applied as an identifying noun to all caucasians regardless of actual hair colour.

Breakfast, I'm thinking, is an hors d'oeuvre from yesterday's party. It should be delicious, but it might have gone a bit stale in the meantime. Also, you're going to have to go back to the kitchen for another one because just one of these things is never going to fill you up. But here's a cup of Chinese tea to go with it ... just a little reminder of where this thing comes from.