Mysterious artifacts and adventurous treasure hunters are a well-established part of the hidden object genre. What you might not expect, though, are scores of live actors, exciting airship crashes, spirit-like races of beings, and frightfully malefic villains. Amaranthine Voyage: The Tree of Life has all of the excitement you'd expect from a summer blockbuster stuffed inside a hidden object game.
With so many hidden object games on the market, simply replicating the formula of the genre will do little to set a game apart from the crowd. Since many of these games offer the same mix of hidden-object scenes, mini-games and object-based puzzle progression, visual themes and settings can do a lot to set a HOG apart. In this regard, Deadly Voltage: Rise of the Invincible does plenty to achieve an original look, but beyond it visual appeal remains a competent but by-the-books hidden object adventure.
Medal Wars: Keisers Revenge is rather crude. Take your average British "Carry On" film, skew it just that little bit too far in the wrong direction, and that's roughly where the humor in this world war shooter sits. Regular mentions of women's "jugs" and pixelated flesh may well put you off from the get-go.
Have you ever wished you could fly? And I don't mean in airplanes or hot air balloons or anything like that. I'm talking about spreading your wings, leaving the ground, and touching the clouds. Well in Surface: The Soaring City, you'll get a picture of what that might be like as you embark on a whimsical hidden object adventure to save your brother Jeremy, the famous inventor, who has built a floating city in the sky.
Picking up after the adventures of the first Mirror Mysteries, The Mirror Mysteries: Forgotten Kingdoms sees Tommy all grown up and in a spot of trouble as he's sucked into a magical mirror that wishes to destroy all worlds, including your own. You're an investigator hired by Tommy's sister to solve the mystery of her brother's disappearance, but you'll need to save yourself before you can worry about anyone else.
I probably wasn't the right person to review The Cave. When I first heard that Ron Gilbert was doing a puzzle platformer, my reaction was lukewarm at best. While I'm all for new ideas, Ron Gilbert is the man that gave us Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. If he wasn't doing a new point-and-click adventure, I just wasn't interested in learning more. As it turns out, that was a really ignorant prejudice on my part.
Mega-developer Elephant Games has an impressive stable of successful hidden object franchises, and with the release of Death Pages: Ghost Library, it appears the plan is to keep on expanding it. The name "Death Pages" suggests games built upon distinctly literary themes; a compelling idea provided those themes are handled well. Ghost Library, while exhibiting a good number of noticeable imperfections, offers enough creativity and beauty to make it worth your time.
No doubt there are plenty of people who deserve a cranial readjustment courtesy of some sports equipment: movie patrons that leave their phones on, commuters who have full-volume conversations on the train, and anyone who gets more than three samples at a crowded Baskin Robbins. For Tennis in the Face protagonist Pete Pagassi, that type of person is anyone affiliated with the creation, distribution, or consumption of Explodz Energy Drink.