We’re reaching the end of the year now, and what a year it’s been. Between a deadly pandemic basically bringing humanity to its knee to the launch of new generation consoles, it’s been a memorable one for good and bad reasons all around. Microsoft will also, of course, end the year with a brand new batch of titles for Games With Gold.

Next month’s headlining title is Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell that will be available from December 1st-15th. The Xbox 360 title was a standalone expansion to Saints Row 4 that continued the craziness of that open world series with a focus on the side character, Gat. After it is another 360 title, Stacking, a smaller title from Double Fine Productions that features sentient matryoshka dolls in a strange adventure and it’ll be available December 16th-31st.

On the Xbox One side, for the entire month you’ll be able to get The Raven: Remastered, an adventure game where you play a police officer who finds himself sucked into a conspiracy. To round things off there is Bleed 2, a hardcore arcade-style shooter that will be available from December 16th-January 15th.

These games will be available to all Xbox Live Gold or Game Pass Ultimate subscribers starting on December 1st. All titles will be redeemable and playable on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and Xbox One.

The murder mystery is a little different though, with wise old- heroes in movies and books, and plucky young lads with cheeky witticisms in gaming. The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief is one of the more recent and only attempts to capture the Agatha Christie style of mystery over the Guybrush Threepwood variant many adventure gamers grew up with.

The Raven is a three part adventure where the titular antagonist, a master thief with a colourful history, makes a sudden and unexpected return. You begin in control of constable Zellner, an ageing policeman determined to make something of his career and, with the Raven set to make a heist on the train he’s guarding, his chance may come sooner than expected.

"The most striking element of The Raven is its setting, a mid-century European adventure of globe-trotting proportions. Add in a sensitive but vibrant colour palette and detailed textures and The Raven winds up looking pretty sharp."

The most striking element of The Raven is its setting, a mid-century European adventure of globe-trotting proportions. Add in a sensitive but vibrant colour palette and detailed textures and The Raven winds up looking pretty sharp. Character designs are equally inspired but, with some odd models and animations, the game lets itself down a bit when it starts moving. Voice acting and music is well delivered for the most part, lending a sense of character to The Raven’s eclectic cast.

Characterisation is a strong point of The Raven. From an eccentric Baroness and her butler to a suspicious violin expert, the supporting cast are functional, memorable and a delight to interact with. The protagonist of Anton Jakob Zellner is equally engaging, with his calm demeanour and ageing concerns offering a pleasant counter to the bratty protagonists shoe-horned into so many contemporary titles. Things don’t stay quite so engaging as the game progresses though. The second chapter sees a shift in control to a plucky young thief in league with the raven, and with this more generic protagonist comes a dip in The Raven’s otherwise snappy narrative pacing. It isn’t a game killer, but it’s a shame the entire package doesn’t retain the momentum created by the first episode.

Story is but one part of a whole though, but The Raven delivers on all other fronts for the most part. Gameplay is of the classic point and click variety, with plenty of items for you to find, combine and manipulate in order to solve each location’s puzzles. The interface is simple, and the controls work well. There’s even a suspiciously good gamepad control setup that, dare I say, actually felt more intuitive at times than its mouse and keyboard counterpart.

"For fans of Agatha Christie or point and click adventures, The Raven is a flawed gem worth looking into. Obscure puzzle logic and glitches aren't enough to keep a well written adventure down in this classic crime caper."

Puzzles are the mainstay of gameplay, and they are sadly where the game doesn’t always hold up. The puzzles all follow a satisfying and logical pattern, but it is a very rigid form of logic. Plenty of puzzles had me stumped for ages, until I found out I was doing the right things all along, but in the wrong order. There is also the frustrating issue of some objects only being usable after you’ve examined them multiple times, forcing the game into a mad dash to right click everything on screen later on.

At least there’s no pixel hunting, thanks to a robust hot spot indicator. There’s a strange point system that is affected by how many times you use this though and, whilst it doesn’t hinder the game in any way, it seems like a strange and mostly unnecessary inclusion. Gameplay is a gate to content more than anything else for the most part and, though a few puzzles are satisfying to overcome, the story is the main draw here.

Now that all three chapters have released for The Raven, it comes in as a fairly substantial package. Each chapter is a few hours long and, though there isn’t any replay value to speak of, your initial playthrough will last a good amount of time. The character shift half way through does result in a few re-used levels, but there’s definitely quality to match the quantity of The Raven’s globe-trotting adventure.

For fans of Agatha Christie or point and click adventures, The Raven is a flawed gem worth looking into. Obscure puzzle logic and glitches aren’t enough to keep a well written adventure down in this classic crime caper. It’s worth noting that it is very much a genre piece though, so if you aren’t the biggest fan of the traditional locked room mystery, you’re not going to have your mind changed by the The Raven. It’s certainly a successful interpretation of this crime sub-genre, but it isn’t quite polished enough to silence the nay-sayers. Still, The Raven will serve those looking for more traditional crime capers well.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Note: This review included all three chapters released till date.

The story revolves around the eponymous Raven, a gentleman thief who pulled off the most daring and famous heists of his era. The game takes place some four years after his death, with a new thief committing crimes under the Raven name once more. You play Constable Zellner, an ageing and portly constable with the Swiss police who is stationed on the Orient Express to accompany a safe on its way to Venice. Little does he know it contains the jewel the Raven’s heir is seeking.

"The presentation that sandwiches the dialogue together is equally impressive. For a game outside the AAA budget bracket to manage such consistently good voice acting is a commendation to KING Art's audio department. "

The narrative makes for classic crime fiction, but it is paced vigilantly enough to always remain exciting. The mystery of the Raven creates the tension required to keep you guessing, and frantic puzzle solving on exploding trains and endangered cruise ships gives the game a locked room mystery element reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s finest. The characters you are introduced to throughout really add to the game’s charm as well.

Whilst they aren’t as weird or wonderful as the famous players in LucasArts point and clicks, they have buckets of charm and enough quirks to make them memorable and believable in equal measure. Particular kudos goes to the character of constable Zellner. Too many games star healthy young American males in a vain attempt to appeal to a mass audience, and the point and click genre is no exception to this by in large. What a pleasant change of pace it is then to control the chubby and balding Swiss constable. His wit and observational one-liners make him a loveable character, but the humour never becomes so obvious or obtuse as to take him out of character. He is a joy to control throughout.

The presentation that sandwiches the dialogue together is equally impressive. For a game outside the AAA budget bracket to manage such consistently good voice acting is a commendation to KING Art’s audio department. There were only a handful of poorly delivered lines amongst generally solid vocal delivery throughout. Zellner in particular made for a soothing listen, a good thing too considering how often you hear him vocalise his investigation. The soundtrack is similarly excellent, offering a light and delicate score that fits perfectly with the gorgeous European scenery.

"The hints are never especially helpful, a real issue when you consider how obtuse some of the puzzles are. "

Despite an excellent audio treatment, the visuals are much more hit and miss. Actual backdrops and character models are lovely, with a consistent aesthetic that merges realism with the bold colours and exaggerated perspectives of a more cartoon look. It’s lovely to behold, but falters somewhat in motion. Uncanny and awkward animations belie the polish applied elsewhere, and cut-scenes struggle to run smoothly, juddering in a fashion that just isn’t seen in the main game.

Things take a general turn for the worse when it comes to the gameplay itself, arguably the weakest part of The Raven. Examining your environments and utilising items in your inventory is simple and stays true to many standards of the adventure genre. You know the formula, you talk to people and collect relevant objects in the environment, combine them in various ways and then use the results to progress through a linear story.

The Raven offers you points for completing optional puzzles. Seeing as most players will examine everything in the environments though (as is standard practice in the genre), these puzzles never did feel all that optional. You can use your points in game to highlight all interactive hotspots in the environment. It’s a good feature to have, and you always have enough points to make this a viable hint system, but I’d argue they should have just made it free to use for sake of ease and gameplay clarity.

A more conventional hints system is offered by looking through Zellner’s journal. That said, the hints are never especially helpful, a real issue when you consider how obtuse some of the puzzles are. The focus on MacGyver style puzzle solving using everyday objects gives The Raven a distinctive flavour in a genre dominated by abstract worlds and puzzles, but it often means solutions aren’t especially obvious.

"It is the story that most people will be playing The Raven for, and it looks set to be a good one. The twists and turns of this first episode look set to be bolstered by two subsequent episodes released over the next two months."

This is fine for the most part, but some solutions often need you to use certain items on each other in a very specific order before you can proceed. It’s a common issue with the genre, but a bit more malleability in how you solve the puzzles would make the game much less obtuse and would offer a quicker gameplay pace.

Faster gameplay would have been a bonus as well, if only due to how slow and awkward moving through the fixed camera environments can be. Though The Raven isn’t the most user friendly of titles, I was surprised to see a Gamepad control setup offered in the options menu. Far from being unviable, Gamepad controls are actually often smoother than the mouse and keyboard setup to the point that I wound up using it for the majority of my playthrough.

Though you may think console style point and clicks are dead, developer KING Art have a very different idea. Credit to them for their ambition. A few problems persist, such as how easy it is to access a VRAM rendering menu that caused the game to crash on my system, but calling out gameplay flaws in an adventure game is like shooting fish in a barrel; easy, unnecessary and mostly pointless.

It is the story that most people will be playing The Raven for, and it looks set to be a good one. The twists and turns of this first episode look set to be bolstered by two subsequent episodes released over the next two months. Though episode one trailed off a bit by the end of my five hour playthrough, the cliffhanger ending has left me excited to see where constable Zellner will wind up in the next episode. For the price of £20 for all three episodes (cheaper if you pre-order the game), I’d argue The Raven is decent value for money (assuming all three episodes offer just as much content as this first one).

I would say though that KING Art ought to offer each episode for purchase separately, if only so players on the fence have a chance to try before they buy. Secrets and higher scores for not using hints are there for the completionists, but very little replay value is offered. That said, it really isn’t needed in a game so focused on narrative and writing. It won’t change the genre or anything so grand, but The Raven is a pleasant and highly engrossing piece of crime fiction well worth picking up for Agatha Christie fans and adventure game aficionados alike.

This game was previewed on the PC.

“KING Art has put together a fascinating story that will enthrall players on a scandalous gentleman thief’s adventure.”

The Raven has you playing as a detective who must capture a burglar of the same name before he steals the valuable “Eye of the Sphinx” sapphire. Players will follow clues and experience various twists and turns on their journey.

Releasing for PC, Mac, PS3 and XBox 360, you’ll have the chance to play both sides of the story, in what’s billed as “a fact-paced click and point adventure”. That sounds like a paradox but the game looks decent enough. Check it out.