Perhaps everyone is tired of hearing it, but whenever you make any mention of a point-and-click adventure with a light and funny style it is inevitable that people are going to bring up the classic LucasArts titles that absolutely demonstrated the very best of the genre back in the day. Now, while many developers in this generation have obviously had that gold standard in their sights, I’ll openly admit that most haven’t quite gotten there. Whether the problem has been poor mechanics or interfaces, too many puzzles that simply don’t make sense, or humor that is present but somehow doesn’t feel quite natural, there’s a good reason that hitting the high notes from that generation can be a challenge.

Enter Loco Motive, a mix of a murder mystery, an unusual cast of characters, and more than one oddball person trying to play detective. Your character, Arthur Ackerman, is actually a lawyer by trade, but considering the fact that his very rich client is the murder victim, and shortly before this happened he had a mishap with her will, he’s going to need to find her murderer to keep things from getting out of control. Of course, everyone on the train (thus the game’s name) is a suspect, so he has his work cut out for him.

When it comes to these games on console, there’s sort of a holy trinity of elements that need to come together for the experience to work. The first, and probably most critical, area is the game’s tone and sense of humor. This can be undercut by sloppy writing, voice work that doesn’t quite deliver, or some combination of all the above but here I’d say the game typically exceeded my expectations. It isn’t enough that you have dialogue options that are simply weird, there needs to be some consistent sense of humor below it, and I was very pleased that most of the time the game would give me a line that fit my sensibilities perfectly, putting a smile on my face. Pretty well all of the voice acting is also spot-on, not allowing any great dialogue to get lost in translation either. Second, the puzzles are by-and-large actually quite sensible in nature. Once you’re able to find the items you need, it usually feels like the solutions to your problems come together somewhat naturally, which isn’t something you can normally claim. Lastly, navigating the game, your inventory, and searching rooms all feels sensible and even pretty leisurely, again an area that too many titles in this space have struggled with.

Taking it all in, if you’re a fan of the old-school LucasArts adventures, I’d absolutely say this is worth a look. Rather than merely trying to imitate the style of those games, but missing the boat in terms of how they used to feel playing them, Loco Motive knows precisely what it has set out to do and executes it all in a way that feels somewhat effortless. Perhaps a little more innovation somehow being thrown into the mix could have taken the experience even further, but it’s safe to say that this is among the best classic adventures on the system across the board.