Telltale Games gave AbleGamers the opportunity to do an early review of Hector: Episode 1 - We Negotiate with Terrorists. Hector is an episodic game with episode two and three scheduled for release later this year. In the same style as Machinarium, Hector is lost in a world of puzzles to be solved and you need to solve them. The primary difference between the two games is that Hector is “a tough-talking, soft-bellied cop, known by some as ‘the fat arse of the law,’” primarily known for his crude humor and less than stellar people skills as opposed to a lovable robot.

If you are easily offended in any way, do not enjoy sarcasm or cannot appreciate crass-tongue-in-cheek off-color jokes, do NOT play this game. However, if that sort of humor is your thing, please continue reading. Some of the jokes include blind pornography-loving pervs, turds, drummers and two appearances by people in wheelchair/scooter situations. None of the jokes are distasteful per se but there is swearing, sexual content and minor gratuitous sex-related themes; this game is clearly for mature audiences.

However, if you like raunchy comedy and click to move puzzle solvers, this is a wonderful game for you.
Game Accessibility
Players control Hector via the mouse by single clicking on items to examine them and double-clicking to interact with objects that are… interact-able. Sometimes you need to be able to double-click rather quickly as I found it quite easy to simply click too slowly and end up examining something twice. In addition, many objects are put into your inventory in the typical puzzle solver way. You then click on the object you want to use with whatever other object you want to use. Sometimes you need to examine items in order to uncover their true uses.

There is no mouse speed control setting or mouse sensitivity; the game can be windowed, which allows for your default mouse sensitivity to take over but in full screen the mouse tends to drag.
Actually, there are relatively few options in this game. You can adjust sound levels and what resolution you want your screen to be set at but that's literally it. There is no remap ability, although with only using the mouse, other peripherals will work as long as you're not depended on the keyboard.

Hector has relatively good voiceover acting but also displays the text of what each character is saying in different colors that are easily identifiable by what the character is wearing and where the text is positioned. I did find two cutscenes that were not close captioned but other than those two I was able to completely finish the game with no sound.

And to be completely honest, I found once I was playing the game for too long I started skipping through the conversations by clicking the screen to advance the text. The default setting gives you plenty of time to read the text even with a screen magnifier, but sometimes it got a little boring listening to the same jokes over and over.

There are certain parts of the game where you must trigger conversations with other characters and say the right things in the right order to advance

There are no colorblind issues and most of the text sizes are easy enough to see in smaller resolutions. Another interesting feature was the hint section. You can literally walk through an interactive dialogue that will lead you through the entire game if you get stuck at any point, or if you just want to see how to run to the game as quickly as possible, a walk-through guide is provided after telling the game you don't want any more hints you just want the answers.
None of the puzzles are timed, but you do need to complete things in the right order and go to different sections of the game to gather puzzle pieces further extending the game. It's also important to keep in mind this is only episode one, if you would rather play the game in one straight shot, I recommend waiting until the end of the year to pick up all three episodes at the same time.

Overall, a pretty accessible game with crude humor often censored by Western games.


At A Glance:

Mobility 8
Mouseable
No mouse speed sensitivity settings
No keyboard interaction
No need for on-screen keyboard after inputting username and password

Hearing 9
All but two cut scenes are captioned, but they do not affect gameplay only background story
Text is present for all conversations in an easy-to-read font

Visual 10
Text is extremely easy-to-read in low resolution
Text scrolls slowly and can be advanced manually
No colorblind obstacles