Hidden Agenda Review Figure It Out Detective!

Hey, gang! Let's solve a murder mystery! Hidden Agenda was recently released as part of the PlayLink series on PlayStation, that means you use your phones instead of a controller and with multiple friends/people you have over. You and up to five other detectives are changing and trying to solve the mystery of the Trapper killer. The game comes from Super Massive Games, known for their story building style.

Hidden Agenda
Out Now
$19.99
Hidden Agenda has a lot going for it if you love watching or reading about murder mysteries. The free app you can download to your device to play the game gives you a huge breakdown of info as well as lets you vote on what you do next in the game. To play, you and up to how many others you have with you vote on what to do next in the story. Propmts will appear and then you choose the course of the investigation. There's a killer setting traps on his victims, you've got to stop them.

In my case of play through these prompts and votes led to some very fun arguments about the case and what it meant to be a real detective. Though we couldn't get that much arguing in as the story rolls along and we have to choose what to do next with lives on the line. You'll be voting a lot of the time on different actions which can change a lot about the story. My group tried to twice play through the start of the game, one of which times now cost our cop partner's life, in that scenario he was gone forever and replaced. So you're choices really change the game.

You'll also be looking on screen with your phones for evidence, which is more like a mini-game. The winners get special rewards where they can over-ride a vote and change whatever the group's choice was.

While playing, I noticed the game reminded me of maybe a late-night cop show or a B-Movie murder mystery. It's all by the book story-telling and it's almost tacky how the start of the story and plot is. It felt like early 90's cop dramas.

I know it would have been out of place, but I would have loved some more playful game-play and ideas. Some examples talked about while playing were altering the the time-line in game, causing a time agent to come and get you or a fake memory save goes bad so a character has to be replaced. Time agents aren't in the game and that's a shame.  Just something to make it a little bit strange or fun other than a genre that's been around forever.

I will commend the game for trying a game play style, on the phone, that's never been done before with other murder mysteries that I can't think of. So, if you're into solving and getting into some fights with friends on whomever you make the Chief and telling said Chief they don't know how to run a police station...well then it'll be a fun evening.

Game provided by publisher for review purposes