Jetsetter Review

Celebrities have some outrageous requests. Whether it’s filling a jacuzzi with imported spring water, craving thousand-dollar cocktails or closing down entire malls for private shopping sprees, somebody needs to do the dirty work to get these folks what they want. That’s the idea behind Jetsetter, a polished hidden object game that has you pampering wealthy celebrity clients as you play.

As a jetsetter, it’s your job to get your clients whatever they want, precisely when they want it. From finding lost dogs to fetching wedding rings to grocery shopping, you’re always busy. Being rich, famous, and very demanding means your clients don’t want second best, and it’s your job to keep them happy. When a magazine asks to interview you about your job, you can’t wait to spill the beans and rehash your favorite jobs.

The celebrity clients are doubtless inspired by some real life personalities. For example, there’s the bodybuilding Governor Grant, a wealthy heiress named Athens, and Eva the talk show goddess. Can you guess who they might be modeled after?

As for the game play, Jetsetter is largely a traditional hidden object game, with very little adventure game cross-overs that are so popular in many recent games. You get a choice of playing in timed or untimed mode, and you can toggle between the modes at any point, even in the middle of a round. The location map shows you all the places where your celebrity client needs help. Once you arrive at a location, your PDA (aka, side bar) shows you a list of items you need to find.

Items are very well blended into the scenes, and most make sense for the locations. In the gym, you may be asked to find a golf bag, baseball, and headphones. There’s a lot of variety in the rooms, which is cool, so you’re not replaying the same thing over and over. There are progressively more boards for each new celebrity client.

If you get stuck, you can use one of the six jetsetter chips in the upper left. This is a very nice twist on the usual "hint" option, although it does make the game easier. One chip surrounds an item with a glow, while another cleans up items in the room that aren’t on your list. There’s a chip which crosses the bottom two items off your list, and one that shows you an image of an item on top. In timed mode, there’s one that adds 2 minutes extra to the clock, and a final one that disables the random click penalty.

Each level has at least one special chip hidden in it. Find it to add it to your inventory, which earns you more hint power ups. If you need more chips, you can go back to the menu and select "take a vacation." This will give you a chance to earn money to buy more chips (more on this later).

After solving the hidden object boards, you have a special task to complete. For example, one celebrity asks you to find her wedding ring. To do this, you must crack two safes by finding clues hidden in her dressing room. These aren’t very hard, but you might want to have a pen and paper handy for a few.

At any time, you can unwind by playing games in the casino, and use your winnings to buy more power up chips. You start with a generous amount of cash, and earn more as you play. The games include blackjack, roulette, and jewel madness, which is a gem themed slot machine.

You can play the mini-games as much as you like. The sound effects are very nice. As far as casino games go, the minigames are very pleasant. The roulette in particular is very realistic, and blackjack is addictive.

The appearance of the game is very polished, complete with neat 3D images of the buildings in the map screen. The length is a little longer than standard, and the music is looping, but pleasant.

Still, there are some issues with the gameplay. Clicks must be precise to register. There is some problem with ambiguity in the items. For example, in the gym, there appear to be two baseballs — one black and one white — but only the white one was accepted. Further, "gloves" do not refer to boxing gloves, which are still gloves in my opinion. "Parking" refers to a parking meter, and not the word parking on a sign. in NY, a suitcase might refer to only one of two suitcases present on the scene. This sort of thing happened a lot.

On the whole, Jetsetter is a well polished hidden object game with an interesting theme. There are some quirks in regards to the items you must search for, but these are offset by the ability to play in untimed mode, and a generous way of earning extra hints. It’s a back-to-the-basic sort of HOG, that’s challenging without putting any pressure on the player.

Gamezebo tip: If you liked this game, check out Paparazzi, Miss Teri Tale, Sunset Studio Deluxe, and Leeloo’s Talent Agency.