Adam Wolfe: Episode 1 (PC) Review

The supernatural detective Adam Wolfe has dedicated his life towards finding his lost sister, and to do so he is dragged into one case after another in which he has to use his observation and puzzle-solving skills to handle it all in this hidden object adventure title. It is extremely easy to fall in love with Adam Wolfe: Episode 1 from the very first moment this starts, and it does everything it can to maintain this mesmerizing feeling throughout the entire experience.

The story in here is a perfect mixture of hardboiled detective and supernatural mystery that quickly captures the player right in the action and magic of its world, while still never leaving its gritty parts in the shadow. While some of the characters are pretty eccentric, which is very natural for such an adventure, the protagonist never wavers from his role as the tough detective, despite dealing with all of these strange things around him.

This has been very cleverly done by having the protagonist being a police officer dealing outside of the supernatural, who, due to some tragic events, got pulled into it - namely the loss of his sister. This use of a plot hook to pull a character type that would normally not be found in a story of this kind is ingenious, and allows to seamlessly mix two genres that are normally extremely difficult to mix together due to the many contradictions that are found between them. The result is a unique plot with a captivating world.

This world and the story alone would have been enough to call it a day and still having a pretty good game to deliver, but this isn't even its strongest part. The strongest part is actually the puzzles and those adventure game parts that, while very often feeling traditional, have several great elements to them that don't ever leave a dull moment.

A normal weakness of most HOPAs is the often repetitive and predictable gameplay that during extended periods of time can feel like an obstacle to keep watching the story, rather than an actually enjoyable part. This game does, however, manage to offer fun and entertaining gameplay by adding small volumes of different content throughout its entirety. May it be a puzzle, a gunfight, or the summoning of an elemental through a puzzle battle, this never fails to deliver fun and unexpected twists to the genre formula to make it feel fresh and innovative, despite only using the genre's pretty standard tools.