Cynical. Adjective. Distrusting or disparaging the motives of others; like or characteristic of a cynic.
Demetrios is questionably not cynical. Like in life, you can simply replace the world ‘cynical’ with a derogatory phrase such as ‘being an asshole’ and it would still make sense.
Regardless of the assholery/cynicism of the game, Demetrios is a nice styling of the point-and-click adventure. No new boundaries are broken through; the game uses well-established characteristics well and have created a relatively interesting point-and-click mystery game with a healthy dose of humour.
You play as Parisian antiques dealer Bjorn Thoren, or rather you perform actions for him as he seems well aware of the fact he is being controlled and breaks the fourth wall regularly. His home is broken into one night after being warned by a mysterious phone call which he ignored. Your goal is to help Bjorn solve this mystery through tried and true methods of clicking everything in your investigation across Paris.
The story itself is well-rounded and a decent mystery game, not giving too much away before is needed. The humour however, that is more of a taste point. The game put comedy close to the forefront in the side portions of the story, such as filing a police report or acquiring a coconut flavour ice cream. The main straight mystery solving becomes a little less humorous, more so that humour could not be waylaid into these parts of the story than they wanted to be kept serious.
I personally have a very dark sense of humour and found the most fun in failing the game. Early on you learn that failing this game is quite easy, you simply must act like a moron. Ignore a policeman’s instructions, drink suspicious liquids and put your tongue into a plug socket. The game story is told through comic-strip animation and it is fun to see all the endings you can get by simply screwing up.
In total this gives the game a well-rounded feel in the comedy, and in an adventure of this kind this is very important. You will find some of the comedy classless and poor, with crude jokes which seem to be at juxtaposition with the rest of the situation. But overall the story holds well.
You will reach several barriers in the game, made worse by the poor hint system. The hints themselves are good hints. But the systems exists on hunting down cookies in the world which gives you limited hints. This can lead to some situations where you are looking for cookies just so you can get a hint on what to do next. A frustrating situation to be in.
In the end, Demetrios is a typical point-and-click adventure with a comedy element added to good effect. Ground is not broken yet the familiar ground is revitalised a little with an interesting story, pretty environments and lots of hilarious failures. The comedy is not a classy as the game touts, though you will still get a good laugh or two out of the story regardless. Be prepared to be stuck a few times and think outside the box and you will be just fine. This game has earned itself a comfortable 6/10.
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