Righteous Kill is a hidden object game inspired by the upcoming film of the same name starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as two NYPD Detectives. But don’t expect to see likenesses of either iconic actor in this game. Instead, you play a female detective in the newly-formed Vigilante Unit, a squad created to apprehend people who decide to take the law into their own hands.
Righteous Kill is a hidden object game inspired by the upcoming film of the same name starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as two NYPD Detectives. But don’t expect to see likenesses of either iconic actor in this game. Instead, you play a female detective in the newly-formed Vigilante Unit, a squad created to apprehend people who decide to take the law into their own hands.
Your first case puts you on the trail of a husband who’s suspected of trying to kill the people responsible for murdering his wife and daughter. You’ll search for clues by visiting various scenes and finding the items on your list before the timer runs out. If you’re stuck, you can use a UV light to reveal an item’s location. You can use the UV light as many times as you want in a level, but it takes a few seconds to recharge.
In between seek-and-find challenges you’ll do things like dust for fingerprints (by dragging the mouse cursor over objects to apply dust to them so that the fingerprints show up), put torn documents back together, and compare security camera footage by spotting the differences between two side-by-side scenes.
The mini-games and voice-over dialogue between the detective and her boss are nice touches, but overall Righteous Kill is a straightforward and short game that will have very little to offer hidden object veterans.
Much like Blood Ties, a game that came from the same team, Righteous Kill is basically a generic hidden object game that bears only a passing connection to its licensed subject matter. The game ostensibly takes place in Manhattan but it’s hard to tell that based on the 11 scenes, which, aside from lip-service to a few recognizable places like Central Park, are nonspecific locations like a shooting range, courtroom and hospital.
The number of items in the game is small, so you’ll quickly start to see the same things – like carabiner, tweezers, walkie talkies and soccer ball – crop up over and over again. The game is also rough around the edges; we noticed typos like "your supply of fingerprinting dust in limited," and some anomalies with items such as a "pen" looking an awful lot like a small paintbrush and the game asking me to find a "camera" but not recognizing the security camera I clicked on (turns out it actually wanted me to click on the point-and-shoot camera nearby).
The story is superficial and not terribly compelling and, as mentioned before, doesn’t incorporate either of the film’s big stars. Not too difficult or hard on the eyes, Righteous Kill might provide a few solid hours of entertainment for players who aren’t too familiar with hidden object games, but genre veterans will likely grow impatient with the game’s lack of depth.
