A Crime-Procedural and Solitaire Mash-up That’s a Guilty Pleasure
There is something charming about how Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 tries to mix a detective story with some Solitaire gameplay. In that, it doesn’t try at all. There’s no explanation of why, as a player, you’re lurching from chasing perps to playing some card games. You’re just meant to knuckle down and solve a puzzle in between examining bodies at the morgue.
It’s hard to explain why I find it so endearing. The combination is so jarring, but Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 puts its fingers in its ears and goes “la la la”. So we did too. We got to play some rounds of Solitaire while watching a surprisingly competent crime procedural play out, and that was a great use of an afternoon.
It’s not Exactly The Wire
Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 follows journalist Lana Whitt as she arrives at a crime scene and the murder of a private investigator. The police are already there, led by sheriff’s assistant Bill Maite. I’ve watched enough CSIs and NYPDs to know what happens next: Lana, as the press, gets turned away so that she doesn’t contaminate the crime scene. She doesn’t get to play detective today.
Ha! What actually happens in Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 is that Lana is warmly invited into the crime scene (there goes any likelihood of a conviction) where she promptly finds more evidence than any of the detectives. Instead of being resentful, Bill decides to rope Lana in as an unofficial investigator, and they become a double-act that solves the crime. It’s safe to say that reality didn’t hold the writers back.
This is all told in a surprisingly high-production-value visual novel framework. But whenever a character aims to do something – from investigating a jalopy to interrogating a suspect – a big blue box appears with a number next to it. The number tells you how many games of Solitaire you need to complete before you get to play cop. So, off you go for a spot of Tripeaks Solitaire.
Solving Crimes via Solitaire
There is absolutely nothing special about the Tripeaks Solitaire on offer in Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1. It’s the textbook ‘remove a card that is one up or down from your card’, with precious few disruptions to that format. On occasion, the card layout is panoramic, so you have to clear cards from the left to reveal cards from the right. Other times, there are planks across the card which mean you have to effectively remove the card twice. But that’s it: there are precious few obstacles to success in Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1.
There are, however, a few power-ups to make things easier. Oddly, Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 wants you to choose if you want the power-ups before you play the round, which isn’t quite how a game of Solitaire works. You only really know that you will need a power-up mid-game, once you’ve hit a wall. You don’t know if that will happen before the game starts. Still, if you’re repeatedly losing at a layout, you can choose a power-up.
There’s the traditional Joker which can become any number that you want. There’s a Rocket, which destroys three cards at random, and there’s a Shield which protects your multiplier. Since you get extra cards and power-ups for chaining cards together, that Shield becomes surprisingly valuable.
You gain power-ups for completing levels and scenes, while you can also spend the game’s generous coin currency to unlock them. We ended the game with enough cash to buy another hundred Jokers, so you can be pretty comfortable spending them.
A Case of Seen it, Done it Before
If you’re looking for any kind of innovation or variety from your Solitaire games, then Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 is not the best choice. I found it kind of perfunctory, if I am being honest. I rarely used the power-ups because I didn’t need them, and the obstacles didn’t do much to stop me. Worse yet, the Tripeaks layouts are surprisingly boring. The stacks don’t overlap much, and the structures don’t sprawl. There was the odd sensation at the end of the game that I was playing and replaying the same layouts over and over again: a large pile in the middle and two smaller ones on the edges.
You would think that this would be fatal to Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1. A Solitaire game with a bog-standard, un-varied set of layouts should be enough to make it one of the murder victims. But – and I say this with all honesty – the detective story is good enough to cover up a multitude of sins.
I was a little surprised at how invested I was. The suspects come and go in traditional crime-procedural style (if you are the first suspect, you are NEVER guilty), and evidence is weighed and considered for just long enough that you can try to solve the case yourself. The writing is a little hokey (and increasingly un-edited as the game goes on), but in its own camp, fun way, it’s engrossing. Lana and Bill do everything wrong, and nothing would stand up in court, but it all makes sense within the rules of its world.
The Dan Brown of Xbox Card Games
The pulpy story made the Solitaire games worth it. Because a vanilla Solitaire mode is still enjoyable enough to play. The games are frictionless, and you only need to play one or two to progress to the next bit of story. If Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 wanted you to play five games per story unlock, I think its score would have gone southwards. As it stands, there is no grind in here at all.
Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 is absolutely not good, by any metric. It’s a cut-and-shut that is one-half pulpy crime procedural, and one-half generic Solitaire game. The procedural is silly, and about as realistic as stopping mid-police interrogation to play a game of cards. The Solitaire stuff is painfully unremarkable.
BUT put them together and something happens. I was churning out Solitaire levels so I could unlock the next bit of evidence, and I found myself in the video game equivalent of a page-turner. Yep, Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 is not good, but it’s dumb fun nonetheless.
Important Links
Can A Deck Of Cards Solve A Murder? Solitaire Crime Stories Chapter 1 Arrives On Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/can-a-deck-of-cards-solve-a-murder-solitaire-crime-stories-chapter-1-arrives-on-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/solitaire-crime-stories-chapter-1/9NBT9D74JR34/0010
