The Last Case of Benedict Fox

The Last Case of Benedict Fox comes from Polish developer Plot Twist and it successfully blends two very different genres, namely Metroidvania and detective-exploration-puzzle-adventure. It's not the best Metroidvania on the market, but when spiced up with some pretty good puzzles, it becomes its own formidable force. But, let's take a closer look at this one.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox doesn't spend energy leading the player step-by-step. After a very short tutorial, you soon find yourself in a large abandoned mansion filled with secrets, dark forces and murders to be solved. Soon you'll be travelling through the minds of deceased people, collecting lots of clues and evidence in the quest to find out what happened to them.

Like a true Metroidvania, you'll run in circles, encounter locked doors and become frustrated and confused - and as I said, The Last Case of Benedict Fox does little to guide the player in the right direction. You have to be patient and keep an eye on your surroundings, because there are clues and hiding places that can help you solve the many, quite inventive, puzzles.

The second part of the game, the Metroidvania part, is a bit more unclear. The controls are rather loose and imprecise, so jumping around the different platforms can be unnecessarily clumsy, and also frustrating. Another thing is the combat system, which on paper is fine, with both melee weapons and ranged weapons, but it lacks weight in the battles and some feedback, as you can sometimes be unsure if you're even hitting the enemy at all.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is not an easy game. The various monsters can easily kill you and that can be frustrating. However, there are surprisingly multiple options to set the difficulty level to suit how you want to play. You can adjust how difficult the battles should be, for example you can choose that the monsters die with a single hit and you can be immortal - and conversely you can also choose that the monsters can kill Benedict with a single hit if you want more of a challenge.

You can also choose how much help you want on the game's map and whether you want all puzzles to have a "solve" option so they solve themselves. So there is plenty of opportunity to focus on what you want; for example, to focus exclusively on puzzles by choosing immortality, or conversely, to let the puzzles almost solve themselves and then increase the difficulty of the battles.

The first thing you notice when you start up The Last Case of Benedict Fox is the truly beautiful graphics. The grand mansion is packed with detail and the twisted Lovecraft-inspired worlds in the minds of the deceased are superbly designed. The menus exude the same style and it's one of the best looking games in the Metroidvania genre in a long time. Therefore, it's a shame that it runs as poorly as it does. When you move around, it's typically from left to right or right to left and here the camera scrolls in strange jerks. It's not pretty to look at and it ruins the impression of an otherwise really nice game for me. The soundtrack is also excellent and supports 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 than it is a Metroidvania and if you've decided to give it a go, it must be because you love exploring the environment, finding clues and solving puzzles. However, you need to be able to overlook the technical flaws that the game has.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is out now on Xbox, PC and on Game Pass.