Hector Badge of Carnage ~ Episode 1: We Negotiate with Terrorists

Hector Badge of Carnage is the best game I have even received a review copy of.

It is also the only game I have ever received a review copy of (Ben304). Which marks it a pretty awesome milestone in my writing career and hopefully means I have my foot in the door now. But in all seriousness, it is the best Telltale game I have ever played, but I never did have as high an opinion of them as everyone else I know and have not played that many of their games.

Hector is a rude, crude, and sometimes even almost nude (there is no nudity in this game) cop who works and lives in Clappers Wreake which as he most eloquently puts it “takes the Great out of Britain”. The first episode of this episodic trilogy takes place during a hostage situation where the police are doing their normal stand-up job and piling up the bodies of their own fallen coworkers at an incredible rate. All other negotiators already in a pile on the floor, they send in Hector who inexplicably not only walks away with his life but also a list of strangely altruistic demands by the hostage taker. What follows is Hector's mission to accomplish these goals using only his head, his hands, his total disdain for the law, and the hostage negotiation fund (aka a jar of pocket change).

The game, like you would expect from any Telltale game, is a 2D animated point and click graphical adventure and is filled with every type of crude humour available. And while I did not find it particularly funny I did appreciate the adult themes found throughout the game world. Other then the humour you should also expect to find puzzles throughout the entire game which, while nothing special, are enjoyable and include all forms of inventory based as well as dialogue puzzles.

The only real problem I have with the game is its controls. Even ignoring the instructions that mention dragging which does not seem to do anything in the PC version of the game, and I can only a assume this was something overlooked for the PC version of the game and originally created for the Ipad; There is still the problem of not using the right mouse button and instead using single and double click for look and use respectively. This shows me a total lack of respect for the PC market, since it would not take any meaningful amount of time to remove the reference to dragging and add right mouse button support.

So if you like the sound of Hector Badge of Carnage and have either a PC, Mac, or Ipad then check out the first episode, We Negotiate with Terrorists, on its website.

My mini-review of Hector Badge of Carnage ~ Episode 1: We Negotiate with Terrorists.

Technical:
Requirements:
Operating System: Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7
Processor: 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent
Memory: 3 GB RAM
Video Card: ATI or NVidia card w/ 512 MB RAM
Direct X 9.0c
Audio card required

I am not sure what is with the high stats, the entire game could almost fit on the 512 MB VC and being a simple 2D game I very much doubt that it needs nearly that much on either the VC or RAM.

Windowed Mode:
Completely supported through the options menu.

Alt+Tab:
Completely supported.