Games you need to try – Hector: Badge of Carnage

Detective Inspector Hector is the only halfway decent policeman in Clappers Wreak, the town that took the “Great” out of Great Britain. He’d love nothing more than to spend the afternoon with a good cuppa and the filthiest porn the internet has on order. Unfortunately, there’s a terrorist knocking about, who’s threatening to commit the most horrendous crime imaginable, making the town a nicer place to live. What a cheeky bugger. 

You of course play as Hector, fat arse of the law. He’s a surly drunk who treats every case as a personal nuisance. Along for the ride is Lambert, his air headed partner and sometimes playable character. As you navigate through Clappers Wreak, you’ll come across a colourful cast of yobs, chavs, sex pests, wankers, tossers, ballbags, slags, and right bastards as you hunt down the perpetrator before he can put his sinister plans into motion.

The first puzzle sets the tone of the entire game. You’re stuck in a prison cell, and you need to pick the lock to get out. That paperclip sitting at the bottom of a filthy toilet would make the perfect picking tool, but Hector’s not sticking his hands in there. So you need to make a net of some sort. The condom you found under the bed, and that shoelace you got off a disembodied foot, will do nicely. And it just gets weirder from there on out.

Northern Irish developers Straandlooper spared nothing into making a hilarious and raunchy parody of British police procedurals. Hector is also a clear homage to classic LucasArts adventure games, complete with its obtuse puzzles that’ll often leave you scratching your head. Fortunately there’s a hint system, that verbally mocks you for looking up hints.

The animations and art style look fantastic, owing to Straandlooper’s background as an animation studio. The record quality of the voice acting seems a bit amateurish at times. Though it’s not bad considering you have just two people doing the voices for dozens of characters.

Hector: Badge of Carnage was originally released as a three part episodic series for iOS back in 2010. It was Straandlooper’s first and only game to date. Unfortunately, it seems the studio has gone defunct in the years since. The publisher, Telltale Games, maintained Hector available for sale, and eventually ported it to Mac and PC. Well, that is until they went belly up too, and Hector came under the control of an “Athlon Games”. Fortunately, the complete series is still available on Steam, where it retails for $17.49 CAD.

If you like Hot Fuzz, British police procedurals, cheeky British humour, or just old fashioned point-and-click adventures, definitely give Hector a look see, ya tossers.