The Clue is more of a strategy/first person game than an adventure game.
Half the game is played in first person perspective and the other half top down view.
So you ask yourself, what is the game all about?
In The Cue your character travels around the local town, gathering information and accomplices to assist in robbing certain valuable buildings.
You start the game at the Victoria Train Station and set off on your journey to make some real hard cash, illegally.
The local police are friendly enough but as you rob more and more buildings they start becoming suspicious and could well arrest you if you had left enough evidence/clues at the scenes of the crimes.
In order to rob a building, you must first scope it out and check the police patrol times past the property as well as the actual security present at the buildings. You need to have a getaway car, which you need to buy, and you need to have accomplices depending on the job at hand. Some require one or more. And, your choice in accomplices also plays a role in the time it takes to complete the robbery. Some might be good at driving, in which case you might hire them as the getaway driver, others at opening safes, so they'd accompany you in the buildings.
As well, you need equipment, it's no use trying to break open a safe with a crowbar, or trying
to open a till with pliers, things work like they would in reality. So make sure you buy the right equipment for the job.
Now, before you can actually rob the place, you need to plan your robbery, you do this from your hotel room. Once you have selected the accomplices and the building you wish to rob, it enters a plan mode top down view screen. From here you plan step by step (literally) how the robbery will take place. Every move, sound or action you do is vital and critical to the success or failure of the robbery attempt. You select each character and give them actions, example walk the safe cracker to the study to work on the safe using your newly bought torch, while the other accomplice goes upstairs to steal the paintings on the walls. All the mean time while the driver is acting as a look out outside.
A word of warning, it can get quite complicated at this time. You tend to forget what exactly each member was up to and also miss the occasional time a security guard catches one of your guys while you were too busy planning elsewhere in the building.
Once you have finally completed planning, can you sit back and press the start robbery button to watch your hard earned timed strategy of the robbery taking place. Jump between members to see how they're fairing.
The game is played with the mouse so, no need to remember all those complicated hot keys that usually turn out to be the whole keyboard anyway.
The graphics, considering the time it was created, aren't too bad, and the gameplay will more than make up for the loss in graphics. Besides, its gameplay people want, not how good the graphics are.
The sounds leave much to be desired, so I'll leave it up to you to judge.
All in all, a great game with a lot of attention to detail required. If you don't like spending hours reworking ideas and plans, this might not be the game for you. All you strategists out there, don't give this one a miss. You'll be glued for days.
