Review: Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure – PS Vita (8/10)

After its debut on PC, the point and click adventure Demetrios – The BIG Cynical Adventure has made its way to the PS Vita. Developed by COWCAT alias Fabrice Breton, the game is a welcome addition to the PS Vita library.

In Demetrios, you take on the role of Bjorn Thonen, an antique dealer living in Paris, who got robbed one night after coming home drunk. As the police shows no interest in following the case, Bjorn has to do his own investigation together with his neighbor Sandra and this is where the adventure starts.

At the beginning, you are asked if you like toilet humor and depending on your choice, the adventure will offer all, just a little or none. I chose “all of it” to play the game and to me it was just right and didn’t see anything offending.

As it’s a point and click adventure, you can either use the sticks and buttons to move the pointer and interact with the environment or the touch screen. Both control schemes are available at the same time which is a neat feature as it allows an intuitive gameplay.

The PS Vita version has a zoom option for better examination which is activated by moving the right stick or by touching the screen for a second. There`s also an inventory bar with all your items and a menu bar where you can load/save and find clues on what to do next using the game’s cookie system.

Demetrios is a typical adventure game where you search for items to combine with other objects or give to other characters to proceed with the story. Some of the puzzles are easy and some are more difficult but there is help in the way of cookies which Bjorn finds and can eat to get clues. Each place has three hidden cookies but not all are easy to find on the PS Vita screen.

In Demetrios, you will die a lot as there are over 60 different death scenes to uncover. But as these deaths are part of the game, you don’t have to start all over again rather than you can continue where you’ve been before. Throughout the game, new locations will become available with new puzzles and also mini games like fishing, worm race, pinball, and more. These mini games are quite fun and I enjoyed them a lot. The most hilarious for me was the graveyard flipper which is a good example for the game’s dark humor.

The hand-drawn graphics look pretty on the PS Vita and give the game a cartoon-ish style. The only complain I have is that the character animation does not always match the situation and should have been a little bit more varied.

The music is well composed and fits the humorous adventure, only some overused samples like knocking on a door or when Bjorn coughs can get annoying. Loading is pretty quick between the different scenes and the game is very well optimized for the handheld.

Conclusion

Thanks to its hilarious humor and its funny mini games, it’s worthwhile to follow the game’s 8 – 10 hours long story which is told in 6 chapters. The only complain I had is that some puzzles should have been a bit more logical. Although you can let Bjorn eat cookies to get clues, these cookies are not always easy to find on the PS Vita screen. Besides that, the game has been adapted very well for the PS Vita and you can feel the developer’s passion for the handheld. For the price, Demetrios can be recommended to all PS Vita owners who look for a funny and not so serious adventure game.

The review was written by Michael. All screenshots are from the PS Vita version.