Game Design

If you're someone who complains about point-and-click adventures being slow, plodding ordeals filled with uninteresting puzzles and boring characters, you might have to rethink your argument after playing Telltale Games' first foray into adult oriented adventure-gaming fare. The debut episode of Hector: Badge of Carnage--adorned with the snarky subtitle "We Negotiate With Terrorists"--is something else entirely. And whether or not you have the stomach for this demented detective tale depends on your threshold for often naughty and utterly warped humor. Fishing around inside a feces-ridden toilet with a used condom, parlaying favors from morbidly obese hookers, and peddling fake drugs to young rave partygoers are only a few of the many seedy tasks you must undertake in the name of justice. Gross situations and intermittent lewdness may be the norm, but it's the creative puzzles and memorable characters that make this adventure worthwhile.

Clappers Wreake is a foul city filled with an abundance of corruption and depravity. It's a great cartoonish setting for the game's crass tale to unravel. The city is home to its fair share of lunatics, and the story heats up as one of the local crazies embarks on an ill-conceived crusade to clean up the town--taking hostages and sniping the heads off of a dozen or so police negotiators all the while. You play as a washed-up detective named Hector who has been summoned from the vile bowels of the decrepit police station in a last-ditch attempt to resolve the situation without having all of the hostages smoked in one fell swoop. Of course, you have to find your pants first. Giving into the terrorist's demands for a cleaner city sends you on a three-fold mission to shut down the local porn shop, help a tourist trinket peddler in the junkie-filled park, and repair a dilapidated clock guarded by a shotgun-toting drunkard. A parade of