Hector: Badge of Carnage - Episode 1: We Negotiate With Terrorists

Still, its charming in its disgusting way, with a thoroughly entertaining story, great gameplay, and a cast of detestable-yet-oddly-likeable characters. [Aug 2011, p.73]

To my surprise, it's one of the better, more traditional adventure games in a while.

You will laugh. [July 2011, p.99]

You won't replay it, but the humor is great the first time through, it's cheap, and most of the puzzles are clever.

Hector is something very unique: a casual point'n click adventure for adults, especially if offensive and gross humour is your cup of tea. The game doesn't shine on puzzle design, but it compensates this with fair amount of well-written and well-acted dialogue. The story isn't too bad, either. [Sept 2011]

As with any episodic content, We Negotiate with Terrorists ends on a cliffhanger, a most amusing one at that.

Fans of classic adventure gaming should absolutely check out the Hector: Badge of Carnage series. The point and click formula is present and largely unchanged from the golden age of the genre but the unique well-realised setting and the excellent writing put this well above the mediocrity bar.

[Quotation Forthcoming]

The first installment of Hector: Badge of Carnage is a crass and creative detective adventure.

With a simple but funny sense of humor, the game achieves in creating a hilarious atmosphere that few games have tried to recreate, and even few with such success.

Visually, Hector has a hand drawn look that is an attractive contrast to the foul language. The juxtaposition works. The dialog is entirely captioned within the frame, rather than beneath it, giving the game a storybook feel that sets it apart from the rest of Telltale's library.

If in your dictionary the 'point'n'click' entry lies close to 'good old times', We Negotiate With Terrorists is the game for you. If not, you can – as Hector would say – go #$%^&^ yourself. Twice! [June 2011, p.78]

The writing is really good in general (despite one tasteless bit of dialogue where Hector calls some gangsters "homos" instead of "homies"), and the puzzles are fun, but don't expect anything out of the ordinary gameplay wise.

Cheap production values and somewhat odd controls aside, this is one of the better Telltale releases of recent times. Loads of funny jokes and enjoyable puzzles, and there's quite a lot of content for an episodic release as well.

One of the funniest Telltale productions that lacks of enough contents to justify the whole price tags.

A great start to a promising new adventure series. It's funny, engaging and we literally can't wait for another dose of Hector's dysfunctional crime fighting skills.

The first episode is an unbalanced one, but it manages to pull itself together for a satisfying conclusion. Its compelling, cliffhanging afterword ensures that I'll be giving the second chapter a shot, as well -- I only hope that it spends more time being irreverently funny, rather than spending a third of its run-time desperately attempting to convince the player of its irreverence.

And so, obviously, I wouldn't recommend Hector: Episode 1. It's short and it's sloppy, and other than its tone, it doesn't have a whole lot going for it. It's also the first offering from Telltale Games that I didn't really like. The second and third episodes of the Hector season aren't coming out for a few months, so possibly Straandlooper could figure a few things out and create something worthwhile, but I'm not optimistic, and I'd give this new franchise a pass.

There is a decent amount of jokes that end up being pretty funny, but there might not be enough quality humor to keep some players fully entertained.

Quotation forthcoming.

To say the level of humour is an acquired taste would be an understatement. [Issue#110, p.118]