Hot Tin Roof Review

Of the innumerable dangerous professions that fiction twists, it's hard to think of one viewed through a goofier lens than the private-eye. We're all vaguely aware, for instance, that secret agents don't have time to swirl Martinis in gaudy casinos because they're too busy sitting in a darkened room, listening in on phone conversations. We know, despite the flights of escapism, that reality is far from glamorous, and yet, thanks mostly to the lingering effects of film noir, we seem to have trouble shaking off the idea that private detectives get all their work done by hanging around at night in a trench coat, following around other people in trench coats, engaging in rooftop chases and inexplicably finding clues that a trained team of forensic police investigators somehow missed. Consequentially, congratulations go out to Hot Tin Roof, a game that wears noir like a clown wears a big red nose, for really capturing the clueless, hopeless, desperate slog of detective work. If it wasn't for the exploding gumdrops, the talking animals, the subterranean city and absolutely everything else in the game, you could call it realistic.

We're getting ahead of ourselves again, though. Hot Tin Roof: The Game With The Unnecessarily Long Quirky Subtitle concerns Inspector Emma Jones, a newly appointed private-eye with a sassy feline sidekick and an unusual pacifist streak, qualities that strangely don't actually make the game a point-and-click adventure – or at least, not all the way through. Sure, there are dialogue trees to bumble your way through and rooms to be meticulously searched, but at heart the game is really a Metroidvania, a genre that has traditionally steered clear of film noir because making the Ice Beam seem plausible in that kind of setting is a real nightmare. In its place, we have... bullets. Ahem.

That's not the whole story, of course. Hot Tin Roof is not any ordinary noir tale, but a quirky parody, and that means you can get away with a metric ton of contrivances as long as they're suitably wacky. 'Bullets', in this context, could mean grapple bullets, knockback bullets, gum bullets, fire bullets, air bullets (but not air grenades, 'cause that would be just silly), all packaged up in the sort of colourful boxes you'd expect to contain cheap, mass-produced sweets. What's really nice about these upgrades, as opposed to many Metroidvanias – even Metroid Prime, the great queen on her purple cube-shaped throne, is a bit guilty of this – is that they unlock progress in more complex ways than just 'use coloured gun on same-coloured door', allowing you to overcome natural obstacles in your surroundings like high ledges, closed trapdoors and heavy chunks of bridge support. There are a few annoyances, of course: the bubble bullets, ostensibly for revealing hidden environment elements, are usable only a handful of times throughout the entire game, and the only way to acquire the fire bullets – which are, I should point out, absolutely necessary to finish the game – is to go through the egregious process of filling your starting wallet up – which, naturally, has the holding capacity of a child's bladder on a long road trip – buying a bigger wallet, filling that up, and then buying them.

Strangely enough, the one type of bullet you never get your hands on is the good old murdering kind. I don't want to be the kind of person who, upon looking at something innocent and charming, asks “d'you think we could bolt some miniguns to this somehow?”, but the omission of combat is definitely a bit of a record scratch. I've always felt that the best Metroidvania upgrades are ones that serve both offensive and exploratory purposes, but since every upgrade in Hot Tin Roof can only serve the latter function, progressing through it feels less like growing as a character and more like populating a toolbox with a set of fiddly watchmaker's spanners. The core Metroidvania experience is still there, admittedly, but without adversity beyond occasional environmental hazards it quickly starts to feel really quite pointless. When the most dangerous thing you might encounter is a leaking raw sewage pipe, why bother seeking out side-paths at all? When I blunder into a secret room and the first thought to enter my head is “oh Christ, not another health upgrade,” something has clearly gone very, very wrong.

To fill these heart-rending wounds, we have the adventure game elements, the inclusion of which isn't entirely unjustified, I suppose; both genres tend to have you dancing the Backtrack Bolero whether you like it or not. Those of you who tend to run screaming at the first sign of Sierra logic can probably rest easy, though, as Cat On A Hot Tin Roof 2: The Movie: The Game just serves you dialogue trees with a side of 'use item on person' inventory puzzles. Alright, sometimes you'll be expected to search for clues, but instead of clicking on pixel-sized scenery details, you'll go through the much less frustrating – if slightly patronising – process of pressing 'E' in extremely well-signposted locations. Dialogue itself is fairly well-written and even brought a smile to my face here and there, usually when my sarcastic sidekick – the titular cat in a tiny brown fedora – chipped in with an irreverent remark.

But good dialogue doesn't always make for good dialogue trees. Despite Hot Tin Roof being ostensibly fairly story-driven, most of your dialogue options might as well have you blowing raspberries for all the effect they actually have on the conversations, which often seem to drag on far beyond the point of necessity. Unfortunately, unlike just about every other adventure game under the Sun, there's no conversation equivalent of “look, I left the kettle on and really have to go”: once you're locked into a conversation, the only way to get out is to just run through the entire thing, an outcome that's especially frustrating when you're already at a loose end running around looking for new dialogue options. This, as it happens, is a pretty common occurrence: the game's dedication to letting you work things out from the clues you've accumulated, while admirable, often means blundering around for hours at a time because you have no idea what you're actually supposed to be doing next. You know how there's that bit in every generic mystery novel where the protagonist ends up in a lousy bar at some god-forsaken hour, completely stumped, all out of luck, until one tiny flash of inspiration pulls all the evidence together? Imagine being stuck in the former part of that situation for around half the game. No wonder they're all cynical brooding substance-abusers; it turns out being a detective isn't much fun.