Introduction
Still Life 2? What the hell is that?
Still Life 2 is a 2009 point and click adventure game by Microids. It is (obviously) the sequel to Still Life, which you can see a Let’s Play of at http://lparchive.org/Still-Life/, tee hee. For anyone who didn’t play Still Life or follow along with the LP, it followed the adventures of Victoria McPherson, an FBI agent tracking down a serial killer through Chicago. This killer was notable for kinda sorta following the pattern of Jack the Ripper; he killed prostitutes in brutal fashion with a knife, when he wasn’t also drowning them or just plain beating the crap out of them. He also had a nifty top hat and a mask, as you can see in the intro video below.
It would turn out that the Ripper was following the pattern of another serial killer from the 1930s, Mark Ackerman. Ackerman was a demented painter, who would get his muse on by painting portraits of various whores, before and after he slashed them to bits. His final victim would be the pregnant girlfriend of Vickie’s grandfather, Gustav, and then Mark was shoved away into the nearest insane asylum. The killings didn’t stop, though…
So why am I playing it?
Because Still Life left about a gazillion and a half plot threads unanswered. Who was the modern day Ripper? Was he someone copying Mark Ackerman, or was he *actually* Mark Ackerman? Who was the Lady of Secrets from Mia’s whorehouse? What did Obstructive Police Chief Browning really have to do with it all? Still Life answered none of these damn questions. It ended pretty much right where the intro video does, with Vickie shooting the Ripper off of a bridge and nothing being resolved. I’m not going away until this series does better!
