Culpa Innata Reviews

I was disappointed by this game due to the way the story was laid out. There was a surface mystery to solve, which happens mainly through interviewing people. It was a basic, straightforward murder mystery which the game spends 95% of the time on. [I'm sorry if the following is a spoiler, but I wish someone in the reviews had put something about this in them. I would not have played it if I knew. } But more intriguing is a deeper mystery which hints at a whole unknown world outside of the totalitarian world the character is a part of. The game barely opens up that world to you and that is it. The murder mystery is suddenly solved and the game is over. You never find out what the true nature of the Union is. I thought maybe I did something wrong and didn't get the right ending, but I checked the walkthrough and this is how it goes. I did some checking and found there was supposed to be a sequel, in which I assume this sub-story plays out. Money ran out or something like that and the sequel was scrapped. This game had potential but dragged on and on along the basic story line. Also the game has you have almost daily meetings with your stupid shallow friend who you have to gossip with. The only interesting thing about that is that it builds the world's culture a little bit, which could have been done in one or two conversations.

First of all: This Steam version is a crappy, censored, cut off version, which doesn't even have subtitles in it! But fortunately they can be downloaded as a patch from the internet. Alas, that is not the only problem with this game. No, far from it. The interface is a catastrophe. Using items to gameworld is horrendous procedure, path finding issues are monumental, and constantly changing camera angles confuse you where on earth you can even go. To top it off, some of the scenes are 3D, some 2D, and there's not any kind of logic there. To finally bury every last bit of interest to play the game, there's furious amount of running around through almost empty, non-interactive screens, and even the hotspots lack names, so you never know what you are clicking. It's because of these reasons, that I simply must press that red thumb. It's sad, because the story and the graphics seemed decent enough. Oh well.

Almighty god of the mcgyvers, what a promising story and what a wasted opportunity. Culpa Innata has a really nice world building that is mixed with a nicely typical noir convoluted story, where all the threads point to different directions in vertiginous speed. It is very ambiguous with the characters (mostly are very mean, above them all a very nasty best friend that cannot stop humilliating and harassing our main character) and it drops pieces of information about the game world in a very subtle nearly Gene Wolfe manner, but unfortunately the conclussion is abrupt leaving most of it in the air, basically asking you to wait for a second part that was obviously never going to come. Because technically is a spectacular disaster. It looks like a 1998 game though it was released in 2008, the camera is annoying as if nothing was learnt since Alone in the Dark (1992), faces are weird and the voice acting is generally terrible. Music is nice, and the writing is usually polished, but mix that with a very uneven quality in the puzzles (the best of them being the "work is fun" kind of puzzles that you can see in Spycraft) and really, after so many hours of very long conversations and repetitive information I can only say that I feel like I wasted my time. A closure would forgive all these inconveniences, but it seems that we don't deserve any closure. Not recommended. There are hundreds of better point n click adventure games out there.

This is a great first part of what should have been a series. Culpa Innata is set in the near future in a society that most of us would find very alien. The main character is an officer given the task of investigating a murder which is an event so rare in this world that everyone doen't really know how to start. The best thing about this game is the detail of the setting. 'The World Union' where the main character lives and works is a society different to any of our own. In the game you not only carry out your investigation but interact with friends and colleagues to get a proper feel of what being in such a society might be like. There's also a lot of reference to the countries not absorbed by this society and how things are different. The writers have done an excellent job of giving a richly detailed picture of this world. The main negative point of this game is that it is part 1 of 2 but part 2 never got produced. The principal aim of the game (ie solve the murder) is resolved nicely but so many more interesting questions appear on the way but never get answered. Very frustrating. Other important points: Gameplay: The game is highly non-linear. There are day cycles and you can only fit a certain number of things into each day but other than that the choice is very free. This makes the game DIFFICULT, particularly if you can't find a trigger for an event. Puzzles: A nice balance of dialogue/persuasion, logic puzzles and inventory use. Visuals: The 3D environments are well rendered but nothing very special. Voice Acting: Very good on the whole with a few terrible accents. Music: A futuristic dystopian nightmare. I turned it down when I could.

Played this after seeing Ross's Game Dungeon. It was worth playing after watching that video. Great worldbuilding and character interactions. The kind you only get when a true author is involved in development. This vision of an alternate future is going to linger in my memories like Chronomaster and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. The gameplay is a bit weird - you spend most of your time talking to people. So much talking. At first I resented it for how much time it took, but now that the game is over, I miss hearing opinions and gossip from all the characters, and exploring the world. Shame they ran out of money while making the sequel, because I want to see more of this universe. If you play it, check PCGamingWiki for the "Culpa Innata Fix (v2)" (+dgVoodoo per the fix's instructions) and the uncut patch.

I love this game. It's surprising that it wasn't more advertised in its time. I read that some compared it to the longest journey( which I also loved) and that culpa innate won out over it... It's got a few glitches, being an older game but the story alone is enough to keep it at the top of excellent, engrossing pure adventure games. It CAN be confusing at first and I recommend having a walkthrough handy . But it's worth sticking with and indeed playing over, as there are so many avenues available in this non linear game that it can seem like a new game upon replaying. Some of the graphics and animations might seem dated, but one can see that much effort went into the people's faces; these are remarkable. I found myself replaying levels just to see the amazing expressions . Similarly the voice acting is very good; especially that of Phoenix and her boss Dagmar Morresson. The story has at least two avenues; the first time I played, I could access the second theme, but last time , I must have missed something, as the story finished seemingly early. If you like science fiction, and murder mysteries and talking to interesting people, you will like this game. I recommend this game!

Good things: both the story and the world are interesting and well fleshed out (the game is based on/inspired by Alev Alatlı's book "Schrödinger'in Kedisi", I presume a lot of the world lore originates from there). The characters and dialogues are more hit and miss, but some of them are quite well-written as well. The non-linearity is an ambitious concept. The characters' faces and facial expressions are well done. The protagonist and a couple of other characters have solid voice acting. Comparisons to the Blade Runner game are valid, this does resemble it in many aspects. Bad things: literally everything else. This is a very good story ruined by horrid gaming aspects. Graphics apart from character faces are hideous. Voice acting for most characters is so bad they sound like crude parodies. The UI is painfully clunky. Some characters and dialogues are awful. There are several points in the game where some exact action is required for proceeding, but the game fails to give any indication of what it is. And even the story is severely hindered by the way it is presented. Moving around in the game is atrocious. The only game I have played where it is harder to move around is QWOP. There are one-click shortcuts to some places, but you need to do a LOT of old-fashioned legwork, and that means constantly fighting with impossible camera angles and very arbitrarily responsive pointer. The beef of the game is collecting information via conversations. However, there is only a very limited amount of actions you can do within a day (I had a day where I had two dialogues and BANG! day over), a very limited amount of questions you can ask within one discussion (typically 2-4, then you "have used enough of their time"), AND you can only speak to the same person once per day. All this amounts to very artificially prolonged and convoluted interactions with the characters in the game. Also, typically there are no clues whatsoever towards the correct choices in conversations. All case-related questions appear equally relevant, yet only some actually result in something. Hence the conversations don't feel meaningful, nor does getting results feel rewarding; it is all just completely blind guesswork. And due to the limited amount of questions you may miss out crucial information simply because you were forced to draw straws and got the short one. The "non-linearity" is implemented in a botched manner. While the player is not forced to do things in any specific order, some specific things still need to be done before advancing is possible (but the game does not tell which things). This simply does not work combined with the limited actions per day, limited questions per person, one visit to each person per day, and inability to end a day at will. It results in the game's pacing going to hell if things are done in a "wrong" order. For example, I ended up having only one possible action for several days in a row and had to walk around aimlessly just to pass the time for the rest of those days, because I had talked to "wrong" persons first instead of the person who (it turned out) had to be visited on four subsequent days to trigger the game to open new options. So much for non-linearity. The worst offender in the game are the puzzles. Only a very select few of them are interesting, and even those are hampered by the clunky UI. Some puzzles are trivial. Most of them are arduous or just plain stupid; they don't test your wits, they test your patience. Some puzzles are impossible to solve without a walk-through, either 1) because the solution is so far-fetched it is literally not possible to figure it out with the information given in the game (there were two puzzles that made zero sense to me even after I gave up and looked up their solution from a walk-through), or 2) because the thing needed for solving can simply not be seen in the game (for example, there was one pixel-hunting case where I had combed the room over a dozen times and still missed the minuscule near-invisible hotspot, and one billboard where I was unable to decipher the number that was supposed to be there even after looking up from a walk-through what the number was). To add insult to the injury, after painstakingly drudging through all the many annoyances the game offered, in the end the conclusion was extremely vague and unsatisfying. Way too many things were left open. A sequel was planned, but did not come out, and never will (this game was released in 2007, and the company has not released any games since). However, a planned sequel is no excuse for such complete lack of closure of major plot elements. A game that is sold as an independent entity should contain a proper ending for its story, especially a game that revolves around solving a case. Don't be me, don't waste your time by playing this game. Watch a play-through if you really must experience this.

This is really a very unique adventure game, I play adventure games since the 80's and i am very amazed with this one. The game is full of realistic dialogs and interesting characters. I am guessing over 15 hours of dialogs are in the game. Only downside is, the graphics are a bit low quality and pathing is confusing. I wish a sequel is made. I strongly advice this game to adventure gamers.

"The best adventure since Blade Runner for me." Gotta agree with this guy. This game is amazing. Great story (based on a book, if I recall correctly), nice characters, interesting puzzles, multiple endings (based on our choices). World Union (where the game takes place) reminds me a lot of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. As for the graphics, for a game that old I don't even think they're bad. Just a warning: see those black bars on the screenshots? Game doesn't run in widescreen. But the story is so amazing that, believe me, you won't even remember that after playing it for 30 minutes If you're a fan of adventure games and a good, solid sci-fi story, give this game a chance. I don't think you'll regret it For those wondering about those merely 4.4 hour of gameplay on my profile, Steam version is cut (it lacks a few sex scenes, like Fahrenheit), so I grabbed the full version elsewhere, and that's the one I've been playing

PUBLIC NOTICE (Uncut patch): I made an uncut patch (the original uncut version is no longer available for sale) which adds full subtitles, decensors the game and has bonuses, here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/culpa-innata-uncut-patch My playtime is low even though I finished the game because I played using the uncut version executable. Now the review: Culpa Innata is a fantastic and quite unique adventure game, it does a lot of things most games don't and really deserves your time and money. Many adventure games are set in criminal investigations but none succeed in actually making you feel like an official investigator going through actual interviews non-sequentially and piecing together the evidence like Culpa Innata. You have a limited amount of time - in the game that translates to the number of people you can interview based on travel time to location - and must choose wisely whom to interview, what to ask and which leads to follow up (and report) in the game's many locations. You also have a well developed private life after the day's investigations in which some other plot threads are explored. The game is non-linear and major reveals therefore happen in a way that is specific to how you chose to advance. Another great success is the game world in which characters' scripts, motivations and way of life feel very lived-in and set in the new world order established by a subtly totalitarian regime very different from the one we live in. The main character herself sometimes says questionable things as she is an active part of the system up to a point. This does make you as the player explore this world on a deeper level than if you were controlling a detached completely-different-from-everyone protagonist meant to make you empathise with a corrupt society that cannot be accepted. The story is very interesting and while the game suitably ends the main plot there are some secret threads set up for a sequel that hopefully sees the light of day sometime. For its age, the visuals are great and the facial animation is solid. Faces having an almost photorealistic feel at times due to the way it uses film grain without being excessive. The soundtrack is nice too, fits the mood well. The voice acting is also very good. I did not encounter any game-breaking bugs or crashes when playing the game (Note: I was using the uncut version patch shared on top of this review). All in all, a fantastic adventure game I'm glad I played and highly recommend it to you all!