What's the Best Detective Game, and why isn't it Disco Elysium?

Inspired by the recent-ish release of Detective Pikachu Returns, the topic of this week’s Best Games Ever show is: what’s the best Detective Game? And it’s a doozy of a topic, because there’s so many to choose from. Investigative gameplay crops up in so many things. Even the recent Assassin’s Creed games could arguably qualify, if you’re happy to define “detective work” as “pressing a special button to highlight environmental clues”.

We’ll just get it out of the way right now: nobody picked Disco Elysium, so that’s the pseud’s favourite out, and nobody picked the smart-arse Batman Arkham Asylum option either. I was as shocked as you are. It just goes to show, though, how broad and open a topic it is.

It’s unsurprising, really, given how solving mysteries is probably the most prevalent way of interacting with virtual worlds aside from doing violence. Hunting for clues and hidden objects, following threads until you reach a conclusion, making informed decisions based on a combination of hard evidence and your own gut instinct. There are lots of games out there that feature detective work, but no actual detectives. Likewise, there are plenty that star detectives, but contain no actual detective work.