Scoop, The Download (1989 Adventure Game)

You play as reporter for a big city newspaper. Recently, a rival reporter was found stabbed to death in a phone booth. Your job is to travel around the city following suspects, listening in on conversations, and even searching in their homes when they're away. Based on an Agatha Christie novella

The Scoop is one of the old classic detective games. Considering the game is from 1989 both the game interface and graphics are good and unlike the early Sierra games like Larry and Police Quest you can select your actions by using the arrow keys as selection. That way you will avoid using the somewhat annoying text command interface.

Like seen in many other detective games you have to talk with everyone and examine everything in the game. The game does contain many puzzle (where some of them can be quite a challenge) and when you add up the ticking clock in the game it can be hard to complete the game. Overall a decent adventure game but of course not reaching adventure games like Monkey Island etc. but offers several good challenges to fans of these kind of games.

The last in the long line of great Telarium/Windham Classic adventures, this game doesn't quite live up to the wonderful Below the Root , which uses a similar but more outdated choose-the-verb engine. It is nonetheless a solid detective game with interesting plot twists and nice interface (e.g. you can "listen" in on the conversations, and question the characters' alibi). It is also the first (and last, alas) Telarium game to use EGA/VGA graphics and excellent NPC routine that is well-integrated into puzzles-- you must, for example, observe each suspect's routine by following them, then eavesdrop on their conversation at the right time and place to gain new topics you can ask other NPCs about.

The Scoop also displays an unthoughtful design, as the rather harsh time limit means that you might have to restore many times to get everything done, which means that you unrealistically know what will happen before the event. Still, its interesting plot, fun character routines, and well-written dialogues more than make up for its shortcomings.

A small adventure-detective game. Lots of talking and puzzling. It does not reach the quality of the Sierra adventures, though it's a very nice thingy.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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