I honestly don't know how anyone can write a glowing 5-star review of any game after only having played the demo. Yes, the graphics are lovely, but the game suffers in many ways. First, I am just personally tired of the "Slide a Character Image Off from the Side of the Screen" interaction with speech bubbles. The voice acting isn't that bad (but it's way overacted), and the character images' lips and faces seem to move. The game play is a mixture of hidden object (silhouettes or list), Find all the [thingie], combination puzzles (find this object to get that object), Spot the Differences, Untangle the Strings, "Simon" (repeat the sequence) and one of the most mind-bogglingly WRONG choices in one minigame of something like "Peggle" where you have to move bumpers to get falling balls to hit certain targets. There are supposed to be "sparklies" on objects that can be manipulated (such as curtains hiding other objects, secret panels, etc.) but in a few scenes the sparklies are notoriously missing from crucial places you need to click to solve a puzzle. Other complicated puzzles in the last few chapters are so non-intuitive that only by using a walkthrough will most players who are not psychic be able to figure out the steps. Another drawback is that each "Chapter" consists of 3 to 4 "Missions" that you must complete and you can only save your game at the beginning of a Chapter. If you leave before completing the Chapter, you have to start it all over again--a "deal breaker" for many experienced players. Play the demo if you wish, but don't buy this game until you can get it for almost free on Shockwave or "Game of the Day". Give this Review a KudosReport as Inappropriate
zahnprod
Posted on Oct 3, 2009, 5:35pm
2 Stars
User Review by zahnprod
I honestly don't know how anyone can write a glowing 5-star review of any game after only having played the demo. Yes, the graphics are lovely, but the game suffers in many ways. First, I am just personally tired of the "Slide a Character Image Off from the Side of the Screen" interaction with speech bubbles. The voice acting isn't that bad (but it's way overacted), and the character images' lips and faces seem to move. The game play is a mixture of hidden object (silhouettes or list), Find all the [thingie], combination puzzles (find this object to get that object), Spot the Differences, Untangle the Strings, "Simon" (repeat the sequence) and one of the most mind-bogglingly WRONG choices in one minigame of something like "Peggle" where you have to move bumpers to get falling balls to hit certain targets. There are supposed to be "sparklies" on objects that can be manipulated (such as curtains hiding other objects, secret panels, etc.) but in a few scenes the sparklies are notoriously missing from crucial places you need to click to solve a puzzle. Other complicated puzzles in the last few chapters are so non-intuitive that only by using a walkthrough will most players who are not psychic be able to figure out the steps. Another drawback is that each "Chapter" consists of 3 to 4 "Missions" that you must complete and you can only save your game at the beginning of a Chapter. If you leave before completing the Chapter, you have to start it all over again--a "deal breaker" for many experienced players. Play the demo if you wish, but don't buy this game until you can get it for almost free on Shockwave or "Game of the Day". Give this Review a Kudos Report as Inappropriate