It doesn’t, really. If you’ve never played either of the previous two editions of the series, you’ll want to pick this one up. It’s fun putting a puzzle together, and
The Orient Express differentiates much better between the pieces than either
Bavarian Castle or
Victorian Mansion did. It’s considerably easier to put together, and that’s a Good Thing. The problem is that it’s more of the same. Despite the fact that it’s now using DirectX 7, the 3D view is still choppy as hell on my fast machine, the walk-around mode still moves like molasses, with requisite bad walking sound effects and music, and the puzzles (besides the main one) are still quite non-interesting. I’m patiently waiting for the day that Dyad just strips the title of all the between-puzzle garbage, with passes to
The Orient Express and whatnot, and releases a simple puzzle engine game which lets you build a multitude of different 3D puzzles, just to build them. As it is right now, the extraneous stuff that they put in the game makes it more of a hassle to play. I found myself never bothering to do the walk-about mode after playing around with it for a few minutes in each difficulty level -- it just didn’t interest me in any way, shape, or form. I’d rather bust my brain trying to figure out how a puzzle piece goes in Super-Challenging mode than waste it walking around s-l-o-w-l-y in the dining car.
The puzzle itself, however, is quite fun to do (and at a price of $19.95 U.S. at that). The pieces are well rendered, and although I still have issues with the whole 3D assembly methodology, the trays and such make it easy to organize pieces as necessary. Dyad’s done good with this part of the whole, at least.
