Emerald City Confidential v1.0.0.128

Work with the world's most cunning detective in the shadowy underbelly of the Emerald City of Oz! As Petra, you'll be lured deep into mysteries involving new foes and familiar faces; Scarecrow, Lion, Dorothy and Toto included. This is Oz as you've never seen it before! Solve your detective's quest and unravel a conspiracy of magic and intrigue! Follow a case through five chapters full of puzzles, witnesses, suspects, and allies.




More info:

Emerald City Confidential is the result of a partnership between publisher PlayFirst and Wadjet Eye Games, an independent developer of point-and-click adventure titles such as The Shivah and the Blackwell series. While this game still bears the hallmark of a Wadjet Eye title – a character-driven story, rich dialogue, and plenty of clever puzzles to solve – Emerald City Confidential has clearly benefited from PlayFirst's deeper resources and budget.

Emerald City Confidential is a point-and-click adventure, which means you progress through the game by talking to people to figure out what to do next, picking up items and using them to solve puzzles, and exploring the Emerald City and surrounding countryside.

Travelling can be the biggest chore in an adventure game if it's not properly thought out, but Emerald City Confidential handles the issue beautifully: in order to visit another part of the city, you simply click on the nearest Gump taxi stand to hitch a ride on one of the flying creatures and be instantly transported. Therefore, instead of having to search for the "sweet spot" to click on at the edge of the screen to exit a location (a huge personal pet peeve of mine), you simply click on the Gump Stand in every scene.

Although magic is ostensibly banned on Oz (as mandated by the land's stern ruler, Queen Ozma), you'll be able to learn a few spells on the sly that will come in handy as well – like the ability to make plants grow, levitate wood, or escape from confinement.

You can keep track of quests and leads in Petra's journal, which will also dole out hints if you get truly stuck. The game also awards medals for reaching certain milestones, and as a fun side activity you can search for buttons (which appear as tiny pin-pricks of colored light in scenes) to unlock bonus behind-the-scenes concept art.


Game features:

* Over 50 beautiful environments
* More than 6,000 lines of spoken dialog
* A new twist on the timeless world of Oz

System Requirements:

* OS: Windows Vista, Windows XP SP1 & 2
* Memory: 256 MB
* CPU: P4 1.2GHz
* DirectX 9