Aside from Fable, it’s not often we see games expressing quirky British humour, stereotypes and language. Hector: Badge of Carnage is one these rare ones. You control Hector, a laid-back and rebellious police detective, solving crimes and stopping thugs on a daily basis.

The game takes the point and click genre, and adds adult humour to standard features. Like all adventure games of its type, the challenge is to solve puzzles. You do this by several methods. Objects can be combined to create new items which can help solve clues. And I don’t mean standard household items; I mean any kind of items. In the first room, you escape with the help of an old shoe, a spoon, a paperclip and, well… something else. As you progress through the game you will also meet new characters, and puzzle-like dialogue options will open. Instead of problem solving though, the dialogue is more like problem-guessing as its near-impossible to detect which option you need to choose, and often you will find yourself scrolling through all the possibilities.

The game is hilarious. If Hector’s stereotypical British accent and humour doesn’t make you laugh, then there is not much that will. The language and jokes have been perfectly scripted. The cutscenes and animations feel like they have been taken out of a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost movie, and will keep you laughing through to the end. The environments are grimy, just as you would expect. Though the game has not got the best graphics every seen in a 2D adventure, the sound effects are great, and the voice acting is brilliant.

The only real problem with Hector is its difficulty. Like many adventure games before it, sometimes it can be very hard to discover what to do in order to progress. Often I was stuck in a room, literally clicking on everything, trying to find the object I needed next.  The game does feature a hint system, but one that is annoying and practically humiliates you into not wanting to use it.

As great and funny as the game is, if you are not a fan of point and click puzzle solving games, you won’t be swayed after playing Hector. Though it adds some new energy to the genre, overall it is still the same basic mechanisms seen throughout so many past titles. Fans of similar games (such as Monkey Island) will love it, others may find it boring.

Episodes 2 & 3 of Hector: Badge of Carnage are releasing this fall.

You can download Episode 1 from Telltale Games here.

It looks as if we will indeed be revisiting the Sonic roots, as we race through the 2D landscapes once more – oh no, more water!

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 has been announced over at Gamespot today and Sega have mixed the 2D layout you remember from your childhood with the 3D graphics you’d expect from a moderrn day games console. The game will be released on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii this summer and is a direct sequel from Sonic 3.

See the trailer below…

Click here to view the embedded video.