The Last Express

I enjoyed the video game overall , it developp mysteries and some surprises are there to make the story unpredictable . There is suspense too because we know , at the beginning, that the video game will end when they will get to the destination . In the meantime , we need to find some stuff before we get there . So we will succeed or no ? The characters have all some mysteries and we discover the story along with our character and we fight against time trough the video game . Pretty nice game but i found the navigation very terrible . When we need to go straightforward thats good but when we need to examine object or a compartment i found it not appropriate and make the investigation harder that it neeed to be . But a good experience overall .

This is the best computer game I have ever played. It's so evocative and you really feel as though you are there in the train, observing everything and everyone! The details are so rich and accurate - I saw pictures of the actual Orient Express carriages in a book and recognised everything! The other characters are all intriguing and the possibility of unrestricted eavesdropping is fantastic. I remember deliberately hanging around Sophie and Rebecca out of a sordid desire to find out all the ins-and-outs of their relationship! And the others were all so well-rounded and complex even though they slotted into what might appear to be clichéd roles such as the Russian anarchist, the doomed Tatiana, enigmatic Anna the Serbian terrorists and the smug little French family heading to Abadan. Oh they transcenced their stereotypes all right. In some ways I'd love to play a game that just involved listening in to a much larger trainload of characters! I have often longed to find a game in a similar style but covering a different set of circumstances - the search has been in vain. "Titanic-Adventure out of Time" makes a fair stab at it but it is flawed compared to "The Last Express".

Anyway thank goodness I bought this game when it was available all those years ago and that I still possess it and the box it came in. I also sent off for the official guide which is a good thick book full of valuable extra information and pictures. I wouldn't sell either for any money!

Set on the Orient Express in 1914, this game is from the beginning completely different from anything you have seen before.

Through the story, you are led by the young American doctor, Robert Cath, who is urgently contacted by his old friend, Tyler Whitney, to join him on the Orient Express, crossing Europe from Paris to Constantinople. Robert, being assumed as a fugitive and wanted for mixing up in an exchange of fire with IRA in Ireland, accepts his friend proposition for escape. If only he knew then what were Tyler's reasons for going on to that train...

Game starts at Gare de l'Est, East train station in Paris on 24th July, almost a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Our hero, to avoid the police, reaches the train in the countryside little after the departure with a help of a young motorcyclist. His first goal is to find Tyler. There's where you step in.

The graphics of this game are unique, process used to input live actors into the games, known as Rotoscope, was used. The results is realistic animation, and the feel that you are on the train. Hand-drawings of train, rooms, made by the pictures one of the last remaining trains, off the track in Athens, which crew visited.

Voice acting is fairly good, there is no lip synching, but voices fit extremely well to the actors, even if most of them weren't given by the people who were used in Rotoscope process. Languages spoken on the train are English, French, German, Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Arabic. Cath understands first four of those languages, so the subtitles appear in the lower part of screen (except for English).

Music, the strongest point of this game thought by many. Original soundtrack was composed and orchestrated by Elia Cmiral, famous Czech composer. Music is mainly inspired by romance, mystery and sadness of the game. Violin play is extraordinary. Music fits extremely well into every aspect of the game.

Story, dialogs - absolutely remarkable. There are wealth of dialogs to be overheard, and the story will surely not leave you melancholic, as by the end you will understand the other part of the story that evoke on the beginning, with many questions and historical lesson.

A game you should definitely play.

This is an excellent PC game set sometime around World War I. I bought the game a few years ago now, it is hard to find. If you are interested in Adventure and war PC games I suggest trying to find this master peice.

I really enjoyed the plot of the Last Express, and the great making of this video game! The idea of setting the game at the outbreak of WW1 makes the game even more enthralling. There is a sense of fighting the ennemies through a coalition, with tragic consequences on the populations. The use of the Orient Express adds a sense of mystery, of travelling through time and across a devastated Europe. The innocent fugitive Robert Cath is of course the heart of this enthralling video game: the character is well depicted and we get a sense of the fighting between good and evil. Congratulations to Eugene Brenwasser for his creativity, sense of humour and intelligence for the making of such an entertaining video game. I fully recommend this game.