I bought Hidden Agenda years ago when I was with some friends to try it out as a party game. We played if for about 30 minutes, then never tried it ever again. I found it today as I was going through my library and decided to see if there was a single player mode. Luckily it does, so I gave it a run through.

This game was developed by the Until Dawn guys, Supermassive Games. You can tell that from the graphics on display. Like Until Dawn, the characters all look close to photorealistic. There’s lots of expressive faces, but I did notice their animations were a bit stiff. I think it was due to the fact your choices could swing the tone of a conversation so much that it was hard to make fluid, follow through animations. Still the game is visually pleasing to look at. The world goes for that dark, gritty, modern crime vibe, reminding me of Heavy Rain. It’s always constantly overcast with most places drenched in shadows with only a faint blue light illuminating spaces. It’s the very stylized look of a premium cable crime show. You never get a definite location for this game. It doesn’t seem like you’re in a big city NYC or Chicago, but instead in a town near a big city, like a town in the Catskills.

As mentioned, Hidden Agenda was developed as a party game. A gritty crime drama may seem like an odd choice for a party game, but it’s like a watered-down murder mystery. You are all trying to crack the case and figure out who’s the killer. Your interaction with the game is very minimal. All the players simply vote on what response they want a character to give or search a picture for clues. Even more so than Until Dawn, this game is more an interactive movie. In the party mode, there’s an added layer of gameplay as one of the players has a hidden agenda, hence the name. I remember them being usually just something as simple as ‘Make the police officer be aggressive towards their partner’ just a little goal that you have to convince other players to choose it without outing yourself as the one with an agenda. It's like that card game Mafia. I do remember it being pretty easy to find out who had the agenda and you can vote on who you think the mole is. The single player game is a straight forward story experience.

You don’t actually control this game with a controller, players log into the game via their phones. This was part of Playstation’s PlayLink, which was a campaign I think lasted for about a month before dying out. It felt like Sony’s attempt to make a line of party games that were accessible to everyone without needing 3-4 controllers. I downloaded the Hidden Agenda Playlink app and connected it to my PS4. It was kinda like turning my phone into a Wii U tablet. It’s not a terrible way to play the game, but I do wish there was the ability to let player one use a controller, especially playing the single player mode.

As a party game, the story of this crime drama is on fast forward. Compared to a Heavy Rain or LA Noire, you don’t waste time on red herrings and hit a lot of the big twists quickly. You play as both a detective and district attorney throughout the game. The story starts off with you arresting a serial killer who plants booby traps on his victims to kill cops. The judge sentences him to death, but 5 year later as the killer is a day away from his execution he recants his statement and claims his friend was the killer. He has just enough credibility in his story that the district attorney decides to look into the case, and when a fellow detective ends up dead in a similar manner to the serial killer, the police reopen the case. Your detective, Becky, has a bit of a sordid past within the police department and isn’t well liked by her peers. From there the story branches off into different paths based on your choices. So I know what I experienced wasn’t everything the game had to offer. Instead of the Butterfly Effect from Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda has the Ripple Effect.

Slight spoilers, I learned that the real killer and the inmate on death row both lived in an orphanage run by a Catholic priest that, well, did what Catholic priests do, if you catch my drift. I investigated their past and learned that our awkward medical examiner was secretly the killer the whole time. He did give off the same weird vibes as Edward Nigma from that Gotham TV series. I ended up killing him, but without being able to prove he was the real killer. This led to Becky being fingered as the possible killer because of the animosity towards her from the department, but the DA and judge were both convinced of my innocent. I don’t get why, even with the examiner dead, I wasn’t able to use all the evidence I collected to show his guilt.

All in all, this game was definitely a flash in the pan. Even as a murder mystery, this game is a bit too serious for a party game. There’s maybe some fun to be had by having a few drinks and purposely trolling the game, but I don’t know if I have enough friend who would sit down for the 2 hours this game takes and take it seriously. As a detective game, it’s engaging. I was interested in trying to crack the case. If this were a full on game like Until Dawn, I think we’d hear it mentioned at least every once in a while. Supermassive can do interactive storytelling games well. I'd say if you are interested in detective games, this isn't a bad entry, but I'd avoid spending more than $10 on it.