Jessica: Mysterious Journey Review

The beautiful and adventurous Jessica meets a mysterious man at the airport and her world is turned upside down as she begins to unravel a mystery that will change her life forever in Jessica: Mysterious Journey. Unfortunately, only die-hard hidden object fans will be able to stick this one out until the end.

Jessica is young, beautiful and ready for a vacation full of adventure. While at the airport she runs into a handsome stranger named "Tony" and they hit it off deciding to ride together on the flight. All of a sudden Tony is frightened away by someone and takes off running through the airport. Jessica realizes he has dropped something and it’s a piece of a map. She takes it to the University where she learns it is a piece of the map to find the "Healing Stone of Abraham." Jessica meets many colorful characters on her journey and has to earn the trust and help of many of them while running from others. Will Jessica find this treasure? Will Tony be back to claim what he lost?

This game is offered in timed and "practice Mode" and follows the typical hidden object formula of listing items, silhouettes, and finding object by description or use. There are ten locations to explore with 17 mini-locations. The story line is weak and hard to follow because the grammar and drawings are poor. It appears carelessly put together, as the text in the text bubbles is sometimes drawn right outside of them.

There are no instructions in the game so you are on your own to figure out how to play. In the hidden object screens, items are listed along the left side and they are difficult to read as the list’s font is shiny and slanted causing you to squint. The timer is located at the top left and also has numerals that are difficult to read. I could not make out most of the numbers and found myself frustrated.

There are several "Christian Fish" located throughout every scene. If you find 3 of these the bottom of the hint screen burst into flames. It is never explained why this happens, but I believe it speeds up the hint timer which regenerates every few seconds. This is fortunate, because the items are so tiny and poorly hidden along the edges or in the shadows you will find yourself using it for almost every item listed. Unfortunately, in some levels I could not get the hint button to work at all and found myself just wanting to quit the game.

If you play in timed mode you are penalized if you click on an item too quickly or too many times. This makes the game impossible as you are constantly clicking just to touch the minuscule item and frequently run out of time having to restart the level. There are some "find the difference" screens that are a little more tolerable, but they suffer from the same problem of having objects that are too tiny to click on and a hint button that won’t help you.

There are 17 mini-games consisting mainly of pictures you have to reassemble, labyrinths to make your way through and a few logic puzzles that are anything but logical. These puzzles were so easy I do not understand why the game developer even bothered. Most of them were blurry and seemed unrelated to the game entirely. The story line was so confusing I have to admit I’m not even certain how Jessica found the treasure.

I have to say I have never played a hidden object game this poorly made and put together. I have had root canals less painful to endure. The storyline makes no sense and is full of poor grammar and does not flow in order

In addition to very little instruction, poor graphics and horrible hidden object screens, the game’s heavy saxophone music sounded like it came from a cheesy 70’s “adult movie” and left me shuddering. Searching for the items was frustrating enough, but when the hint button didn’t work for most of the levels that just made it impossible for me to find anything redeemable in this game. The only positive I could find is that the game didn’t crash on me.

I would not recommend a game with so many flaws. At the very least play the demo before you purchase it. You will be glad you did.