Hector: Badge of Carnage is a traditional 2D point-and-click adventure which is split into episodes much like Telltale's recent games. The game is not created by Telltale; only published by them. It is created using the Telltale tool but by an Irish development team known as Straandlooper.
Hector is a British police man who operates in the fictional town called Clappers Wreake. Hector is a crude and brash character which drives the games' crass humour. The humour won't appeal to everyone, so if you cannot accept the idea of using a condom as a make-shift net to fish around a toilet, then its best avoiding the game completely.
During Episode 1: We Negotiate with Terrorists, you begin the game by helping Hector fix his police car in order to meet a terrorist who has taken a bunch of hostages and sniped many police negotiators. The terrorist demands that Hector should improve the neighbourhood which is posed as three tasks; repairing the town clock, making a donation to the Clappers Wreake Preservation Society, and shutting down a pornography store. Each of these three tasks will require numerous steps, often involving plenty of weird stuff, and travelling back and forth between locations. Navigating back and forth is easy, since you can just open the map and click to travel to your new location which eradicates the tedium often found in these games.
In Episode 2: Senseless Acts of Justice, Hector's task is to identify and track down the terrorist. Hector will need to blow his way out of a building, visit a seedy nightclub in a converted church, take a lady on a date, and sign up for a meat delivery service. A new mechanic introduced in this episode is the ability to switch control between Hector and his partner Lambert in order to solve some of the games' puzzles.
In Episode 3: Beyond Reasonable Doom, Hector and Lambert must escape a death trap, then find their way back to the city to put an end to the terrorists diabolical scheme. This final episode is probably the most over the top episode. The majority of the game takes place in one location which spans multiple screens, rather than being set across numerous locations like in the previous games. You can still use the map to jump to the different screens which is great.
Gameplay is standard for a point-and-click adventure game. You can pick up items and store them in your inventory. These can be inspected, combined with other items, or used with the environment or people in order to progress through the game. Conversations progress through dialogue trees which can uncover tasks that Hector must accomplish or/and give Hector a chance to put his sharp tongue to good use. Despite his personality, Hector is a strangely likeable character and additionally, there are plenty of likeable characters in the support cast too.
Objects can be looked at with a single click, or interacted with using a double-click. I find it a bit strange that they didn't use the right click to view, since double-clicking can cause you to skip over dialogue if the game registered it as a single-click. Another strange thing is that the game's controls state that clicking and dragging exits the screen, but in-fact; you use double click for that. If you are stuck, there is a walk-though within the game, which can be viewed as a list of questions, or as a full step-by-step walk-through.
Badge of Carnage's humour and content isn't for everyone, and at times, it can be a bit too easy and obvious. If you can accept these points, then there's a decent point-and-click adventure game.