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When I first jumped into Hector: Badge of Carnage, the first of a three part series from Telltale Games, I was not sure as to what to expect.  I mean, you understand that playing a Telltale title will encompass smaller, bite sized chunks of adventure gaming, but it normally has a friendly face attached to it.  Hector dispatches that family friendly title not more than 30 seconds into the game as we get detailed commentary about Helen Mirren’s breasts.  Sure, I have no problem with crude, and Hector delivers on that promise in full, and it is a decent adventure game to boot, but the strong English/Irish humor factor may leave too many scratching their heads to figure out the joke.

In the first episode of the series, We Negotiate with Terrorists, we meet our title character locked up in a jail cell, having to use our wits to get out a cell, and it is in this first sequence of events that we find out that this is no ordinary Telltale published title.  When the puzzles require you to use a severed foot, a used condom to fish something out of a well-used toilet, you realize that this game is going to offend.  Sure, I love a good condom joke like the rest of the gamers out there, but Hector seems to want to push hard on the offensive button, and to the point that it becomes offensive just for the sake of being offensive.

Thankfully, if you can get past the early vulgarity, you end up digging into a fun adventure game that sets off with Hector having to diffuse a terrorist standoff in the city of Clapper’s Wreake.  Someone has taken an apartment building hostage, and has been killing off negotiators one by one (which we see in comically graphic detail earlier).  Hector is brought in because he is a cop that always gets results, albeit, with messy results.  Our terrorist is only asking for three demands that will end up bringing some beauty back to a city that has been driven into dilapidation by corruption and smut.

Each of the city goals will have  you searching your wits as the puzzles are very challenging, which is a nice change of pace, as Telltale games tend to fall on the easier side of the fence.  There was a few that left me baffled and grabbing at straws to solve them.  Of course, the hint system is still in the game, and as befitting this title, is rather snarky as it provides you hints, from pointing in the general direction to flat out telling you what needs to be done.

While some of the puzzles will leave you scratching your head for a solution, the real barrier to We Negotiate with Terrorists is the general language barrier.  The game is developed by a small team in Northern Ireland, and the terminology that is used throughout is very locational based.  I have spent some time overseas in the UK and I was left trying to decipher what some of the terms and phrases meant.  Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but when you are conveyed a hint as to what to do and you can’t get past the general terms being used due to a linguistic barrier, it hurts the title as a whole.  I understand that this is a European title, but it kills the fun if I have to Google phrases to find out what they mean in Standard English.

Language aside, Hector is a really good adventure title, probably one of the better ones I have seen in the last year.  The puzzles never feel cheap, and they constantly push your brain to find a solution.  I just wish that I would have understood more of the jokes and quips that were made to make more sense of what was happening on screen.  Hector is definitely worth kicking the tires on the first episode to see if you want more, but only venture in if you have a strong constitution for the vulgar and offensive.  Hector: Badge of Carnage Episode One: We Negotiate with Terrorists gets a 3.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out Hector: Badge of Carnage Episode One: We Negotiate with Terrorists and other PC reviews at Test Freaks.