17.) The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker
Interesting FMV based adventure game. It's clunky, and the execution falls flat at times, but I enjoyed it overall.
You're a psychiatrist who is just starting a new job, your predecessor having been murdered, and the patients being the prime suspects of said murder. Each "day", you question the patients, trying to help them as well as get hints as to who may have killed Dr. Dekker. Everything is done in live action FMV scenes, and you have an assortment of questions to ask, as well as being able to type in questions yourself (it uses a text parser so it can be a bit frustrating if you don't use the right keywords).
The killer is random each time (out of 6 people), so there is SOME replay value to it, but the game is a bit bulky overall and could have probably used some slimming down in the long run. There are hundreds of questions between the multiple "sessions" and about half way through I just wanted to get on with it. Maybe half the patients were truly interesting and I looked forward to hearing more from them, but some of them felt like they dragged on for way too long. It was a pretty ambitious game, and I feel like they ultimately succeeded in what they were going for. Has a very strong "Lovecraft" feel to it which is wholly intentional (and genuine Lovecraft at that. Very slow burning, existential horror type stuff for the most part) and by the end you start questioning the sanity, motives and even identity of the character you are playing.
The acting was surprisingly solid for what I was expecting, and downright GOOD at times. The particular company that made this apparently focuses on FMV games and this is definitely one of the better examples of the genre out of the few that I've played. Overall it was a really solid game for what I was expecting for the price I got it so I was pleasantly surprised. It stumbles in a lot of places, but it has a lot of charm that carries it through despite outstaying its welcome just a tad in the long run.