Women's Murder Club: Downloadable Game Review

I'm a confessed murder mystery game addict. Murder on the Orient Express is my drug of choice. I approached Women's Murder Club with a two fold I love concept of any murder and women's murder is like chocolate chips in the brownies! I did feel just a hint of hauteur; history mystery my forte and I tend to look down on most modern crime fiction. Women's Murder Club is a synthesis of the James Patterson crime fiction novels. Players get to jump into big city crime scenes with three mistresses of crime, Lindsay the homicide dick, the forensics expert, Claire and Cindy the tenacious crime beat reporter.

I played the game with my 10 year old daughter. She had the drill all figured out instantly. and agreed that parts of it are, well predictable and juvenile. The music is tolerable, a kind of techno 'High Plains Drifter'. The graphics fine; a bit stereotypical: a 'Sam Spade' kind of homicide dick's office, a 1980's crime lab, and a body on the San Francisco wharf directly under the Golden Gate bridge(complete with foghorn).

The dialog is cheesy in the extreme. The young Chinese guy is called in to decipher something; he says that he is 'glad to help; I've been waiting for my big break'. Nobody has used that phrase since Judy Garland in 'A Star is Born' (1930).

I've played Nancy Drew for years and even her saccharine personality is more 3D than Lindsay or 'Linds') as she calls herself. Some effort is made at being 'multi-cultural'; an Asian beauty is the undefiled corpse (poison of course, never anything gory like a gunshot!) and Claire is the hardened African American forensic expert. Each character, including the victim, is a perfectly proportioned and dressed Barbie doll figure. No cellulite or gray hair with these girls.