It is a tough job to be a private investigator these days. That's how Stan Ames feels, whose cases mainly seem to be about snapping photos of cheating husbands, and doing leftover work for the police. Then finally, one day something happens that changes everything.

As I mentioned, Stan has been working on petty cases, when he receives a call from a woman in distress, who tells him a story about a mysterious corporation. When Stan begins to investigate the details, he is drawn into a web that will not be easy to escape from.

The story of Stan Ames really drew me into the whole series of events. The ideas used for the story are good, and the way in which events unfold has been well planned. Once you start playing, it will be hard to stop. Because as you delve deeper and deeper into what this corporation is doing in the game, you will be overcome by surprise, shock or possibly some other emotion I missed. The music fits the game's style perfectly, although the one issue about the music is that it is borrowed music from other titles, such as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. This is the author's first game, of course, and in a way the borrowed music is a nice sort of tribute to the those titles, but it would have been nice to hear original music.

Now, the issues I had about this title start with the extremely slow walking speed. There are also some graphic inconsistencies in the game, especially in the first room, which seems to be blurry, and other rooms in game which just don't all flow that well. Finally, the ever fun pixel-hunting to solve some puzzles is annoying to face and may have you wondering how to beat certain puzzles and eventually resort to clicking around randomly. On that note, a couple of puzzles were just strange as well, especially the one at the dock, which makes no sense and makes you wonder why you needed to do that.

Still, despite those shortcomings, Stan Ames: Private Eye, Episode 1 is a fun adventure game which drew me in and made me want to finish it. A good start for this developer, and I am anxious to see the next instalment in this series as it shows lots of promise.