Usually, a point-and-click adventure game puts you in the role of a heroic character, or at worst someone forced by circumstances to do absurd things. Hector: Badge of Carnage gleefully does the opposite, putting players in control of a cynical, drunken member of a British police department who is only marginally better than his fellow officers and various criminals who walk the streets. Whether you view its colorful depiction of false criminal charges as a means of social intimidation, reckless misuse of firearms, and showing up for work drunk as a social commentary, exaggerated parody, depressingly accurate, or an unfair depiction of police is probably an exercise left to each individual player. Regardless of your interpretation, this is a very adult-oriented adventure game that has a good structure, but is let down by its writing.
Of course, the police force in Clapper’s Wreake has a reason to be so down in the dumps; the society they watch over is pretty pathetic. There isn’t much motive to protect and serve when the public seems to consist of nothing but taser-happy seniors, ’bling-laden’ members of youth gangs, ugly prostitutes, and drunks crumpled over in alleyways. While the artwork is clearly in an exaggerated comic book style that has some similarities to the Penny Arcade webcomic, Hector’s world is one of non-stop corruption and stupidity; he may be drunk and cynical, but he’s basically the ’straight man’ (in the comedic sense) you see this absurd world through. Make no mistake, this game isn’t for kids despite its art style.
As an actual adventure game, Hector’s first outing works very well. The puzzles are all over the place in terms of difficulty, but this is actually a good thing since it means you get to enjoy a mix of puzzles; some are very easy, others reasonable, a few are surprisingly clever, and there are sadly one or two that are a bit frustrating. Nonetheless, the good definitely outweighs the bad here as Hector is easy to control (you just have to get used to double-clicking things that most modern adventures only have you click once), a hint system that offers advice in very smart increments, and generally good puzzles. If Badge of Carnage were to be evaluated solely on these aspects, it would be an excellent adventure.
However, adventure games are primarily a medium for telling a story and this is where Hector runs into trouble. Seeing a cynical drunk cast as the ’only sane man’ is amusing at first, but quickly becomes depressing because while Hector is a jerk, everyone else is orders of magnitude worse and the humor generally boils down to "look how pathetic this segment of society is", repeated several times with the noun changed; first it’s the police, then youth gangs, porn addicts, prostitutes, homeless drunks, and so on. This one-note humor wears out its welcome quickly and leaves one wondering what the ’next group of idiots to be mocked’ will be. To be fair, there are some genuinely funny segments where Hector breaks out of this mold but they’re definitely rare. If you’re going to use an adventure game as the means of telling a comedic story, the humor must be varied enough to keep the player’s interest.
That single, repeated problem brings Hector: Badge of Carnage - Episode 1: We Negotiate With Terrorists down from what could have been true greatness. The adventure itself will last about three hours, which seems to be normal for a $10 USD game in this genre. The puzzles and interface are excellent, but the story’s repeated and almost single-minded focus on skewering modern society is disappointing; segments with more clever jokes were present yet too few and far between. On the other hand, my discussion with other players found they enjoyed said humor far more than I did and I’m left having to issue this summary: Hector’s first episode is a good adventure game in terms of puzzles and general play, but your opinions on its humor may vary wildly. Therefore while I wasn’t very fond of it, adventure game fans might want to take a look at it all the same.
