--The game is very interactive and has a number of locations per level that you can gather clues from. It isn't one of the games where most of the background is just scenery; just about everything in the scene is useful in some way. There were a few occasions on which you were able to move something and it ultimately did nothing other than to further the 'creepy' aspect of the game (i.e. moving lights, pushing the heavy hooks that hang down in garages, etc.) but for the most part, the environment was largely part of the game.
--There was an array of different puzzles and mini-games as you progressed throughout the story. I definitely did not get bored with the different types of games or feel like 'aw it's this kind of puzzle again?' unless I could tell that it was a type of game I wasn't good at. lol Many games with these puzzles as part of the story have similar set-ups so it's inevitable to come across certain types of games if you play this genre regularly, but while some games repeat a few of these games continuously throughout the story, this one does not.
--Each location that you unlock in the game is very different from the ones before and after it. In this game, there is an amusement park, a desert, and a haunted forest, just to name a few. While it may sound like these three locations have nothing to do with each other, in the end they do serve as a vehicle for the progression of the game and also provide for some variety so that you're not constantly searching and re-searching the same locations for different clues.
--Each puzzle involved was also a vehicle to your progression throughout this story. I find it confusing and sort of irritating when I come across games that have puzzles to help you get through the main storyline, then smaller puzzles on the side that don't have much of a purpose and don't help very much. It just seems like a waste of time to me. This game thankfully utilizes all of the puzzles.
--As with most pc games, when you start the game you get the option to either play in regular mode, with hints and tutorials throughout, or the expert level, with no hints or tutorials. I always play in regular mode because I'm a little too dense for the expert level on some of these things. lol In many of these games, you get a certain amount of hints and have to earn any extra amounts through the solving of future puzzles or one of the mini-games. In this game, you just have to wait until the hint button recharges, which doesn't take any longer than 7 seconds. You can use as many hints as you want throughout this game without repercussions, and you can skip some of the puzzles if necessary without any repercussions as well.
--The story ends, but on a cliffhanger for Part 2 of this game so if you liked Part 1 and what it had to offer, you'll be able to get to do it all over again when this story continues. The fact that a second part of the story is being created will explain why the end battle to this story is so anticlimactic.
--I liked the graphics in this game as well. Many of the locations revolve around some type of outdoor setting and I liked the attention that was paid to the little details in each location. I think the developers did a good job of making the scenery more realistic and catching those little bits in environments that we don't see every day.
--One of my biggest complaints with this game is the character narration and dialogue. Most of these games don't have Oscar-worthy plot, dialogue or narration. However, at least make the voices convincing. If you're in-game and find a frightened character, they shouldn't be smiling and their voices completely without fear. There should be some consistency with the narration and direction of the dialogue but instead it comes across as laughable. The villain's voice in this game pushes the normal campiness in these games to an over the top level, the voice overs are not always consistent with the subtitles and it isn't convincing at all.
--There isn't always a clear understanding of what to do in some of these locations. On some of the levels, there may be three places for you to explore and using a hint may point you in all of these directions, but the clues are sometimes very subtle and easy to miss; in many of these locations you have to build something in order to progress throughout the level, and the clues are scattered around the different areas. It's not always clear that you'll have to build something or what you may need, so it can sometimes become a lot of back and forth until you understand exactly what the goal is.
--If you don't understand what to do, you end up going through a lot of hints and those aren't always helpful because as I said above, a hint may point you in several directions at once if you're missing clues from all of those areas. It's confusing and if you haven't yet figured out which one to explore first, you waste a lot of hints...and time...trying to figure it out. The hints aren't always helpful if there are multiple things to do.
--You'll probably begin to piece things together at the beginning of the story if you're as suspicious as I am in these types of games, but if not then about halfway through you'll probably figure out who the villain is. It's rather predictable.
--There are these little eyeball looking bugs that you'll have to scout for in every scene. This is probably just a personal annoyance, but after awhile of looking through the different locations and trying to focus on the real point of the game, remembering to look for those bugs gets distracting. As far as I'm aware, other than unlocking a trophy when you find them all, they have no ultimate purpose so I don't see why they're there. It got annoying towards the end of the game. On another note though, the bugs are spying on you....I can't quite explain the comfort I felt when I found the last bug in a scene and knew I wasn't being watched anymore. Don't judge me.
If you can overlook the cons (and none of them detract majorly from the game so I think you can), this is actually a pretty solid game. There is a lot of variety in the types of puzzles that you do, so you won't have to worry about the puzzles getting repetitive. There are also a lot of places to explore and after a level is completed, you won't have to revisit it. The attention to detail in the scenery and the graphics are also really nice to look at; they don't look cheap or poorly done. I like that as you're exploring what you think is the main point of the story, you realize that it goes a little deeper and you can continue to add on to that story as the game progresses. The concept of this being a hidden object game isn't done in the typical manner of getting scenes and 12 things to search for with the bonus object being something that helps you in the major storyline, but you do have to look for every object that you need and every object that you do find ends up being used to help you move forward in the story. I enjoyed this game.
Rating:
It's pretty good, but the cons keep me from rating it higher.
*Note: This game is much better if you're already a member of Club iWin. If you aren't, your gameplay will be incessantly interrupted every 5-7 minutes for ad breaks. It's extremely annoying. You've been warned.*
I hope you liked this review! I'm trying to learn how to make my reviews shorter while still being thorough and to the point. Let me know if you want me to include screenshots of gameplay in future posts. I've got a few more games to review this month that I've been checking out, I'll see if I can make them a little shorter.
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