The Last Case of Benedict Fox from Polish developer Plot Twist manages to meld two very different genres, Metroid and Detective-Exploration-Puzzle-Adventure. It’s not the best Metroid on the market, but when paired with some pretty good puzzles, it becomes a force in its own right. But let’s take a closer look at this.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox doesn’t waste energy guiding the player step by step. After a very brief tutorial, you quickly find yourself in a large abandoned mansion full of secrets, dark forces and murders to be solved. In no time, you’ll be traveling through the minds of deceased people, gathering tons of clues and evidence to find out what happened to them.
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Just like the real Metroid, you’ll run in circles, encounter locked doors, get frustrated and confused – as I said, The Last Case of Benedict Fox does little to steer the player in the right direction effect. You’ll have to be patient and keep an eye on your surroundings, as there are clues and hiding places that can help you solve many very inventive puzzles.
The second part of the game, the Metroid part, is a bit unclear. The controls are rather loose and imprecise, so jumping around the different platforms can be unnecessarily clumsy and frustrating. The other thing is the combat system, which is good on paper, with melee and ranged weapons, but it lacks weight and some feedback during combat, as you’re sometimes not even sure if you’ve hit an enemy.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox is not an easy game. Various monsters can easily kill you, which can be frustrating. But, surprisingly, there are a variety of options to set the difficulty level to suit how you want to play. You can adjust the difficulty of the battles, for example you can choose monsters that kill in one hit and you can be immortal – conversely, you can also choose monsters that can kill Benedict in one hit, if you want more of a challenge.
You can also choose how much instructions you want on the game map, and whether you want all puzzles to have a “solve” option so they can solve themselves. As such, there are plenty of opportunities to focus on what you want; for example, to focus on the puzzles by choosing immortality, or conversely, to let the puzzles pretty much solve themselves and then increase the difficulty of the combat.
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The first thing you notice when you start The Last Case of Benedict Fox is the really nice graphics. The grand mansion is full of detail, and the twisted Lovecraftian world of the dead’s mind is brilliantly designed. The feature sheet exudes the same style, and it’s one of the best-looking games in the Metroidvania genre in a long time. So it’s a shame it worked so badly. As you move around, usually left to right or right to left, here the camera rolls with an odd jitter. It doesn’t look pretty and it spoils the impression of a really good game to me. The soundtrack is also excellent, supporting the dark, twisted world in which most of the game takes place.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox is a better detective-exploration-puzzle-adventure game than Metroid, and if you decide to give it a go, it’s because you love exploring environments, finding clues, and solving puzzles. However, you need to be able to ignore the game’s technical flaws.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox is out now on Xbox, PC, and Game Pass.