Haunted Hotel: Ancient Bane

There's another mystery for James and his player-controlled sidekick to solve - this time it concerns missing intellectuals at a haunted hotel! The twist? This time the hotel is supposed to be haunted! That's right, in one of the series' more audacious premises, a man with the warning-bells name of 'Abraham Shadowy' has built a hotel designed to terrify its thrill-seeking guests. The various monsters and ghosts are all carefully crafted machines that couldn't possibly harm anyone. Unless, of course, Shadowy were to attempt to gild the lily and purchase a genuine Egyptian sarcophagus - complete with cursed mummy - and store it in a secret room in the basement. But what's the worst that could happen?

Criteria 1: To what degree do the puzzle screens look like a thrift store vomited on my monitor?

It's not too bad. This once again comes from Elephant Games, who, as always, do a stellar job of building plausible HOSs. The setting here - a dilapidated hotel under assault by paranormal forces - is a perfect setting for piles of detritus to naturally appear. There is a surprisingly large amount of clutter in the inventory bar, however. The developers have made the odd choice to load the player down with nearly a dozen items early in the game, then reliably give them new ones just as quickly as the old ones are used up. It's a little frustrating to have to scroll back and forth through the inventory every time I want to try a solution to an item-based puzzle, or dig out a particular amulet to open a lock. This kind of bloat doesn't add anything to the experience, merely stretches out the least interesting part of the game - inventory management.

Criteria 2: Are the searches justified by the premise/story?

The HOS are few and far between in this game. The developers were clearly more interested in having the player assemble machines, disarm traps, and run through a course of the standard puzzles. The HOSs which do show up are generally 12:1 affairs, which at least means a bare minimum of work was put in to explain their presence. That's not to say the lack of HOSs cripples this game - it's a strong narrative with well-integrated puzzles, it's just that it's weighed quite heavily towards the puzzle side of the 'Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure' genre.

Criteria 3: How well do the various puzzles and object searches meld together to form a coherent whole?

This really is a solid story from beginning to end. While it's the weakest of the '20s detective Haunted Hotel trilogy, that's only because Eclipse and Death Sentence are both such amazing games. The fundamentals are all here, however - jump scares, gorgeously drawn environments, puzzles that perfectly suit the plot and location. The game's fundamental problem is that the story is just too convoluted for its own good, without any of the fun which could have been brought to the premise. Just imagine - a man builds a fake haunted hotel and accidentally decorates it with a legitimately haunted artifact. That's a premise ripe for comedic exploitation. Yet the game has the same grave and serious tone that is the hallmark of the rest of the series - which doesn't suit it at all.

Oddly, it's only in the bonus chapter included with the Collector's Edition that things start to feel more on model. Apparently the hotel had, previous to its purchase by Mr. Shadowy, been the site of a tragic love affair that ended in madness and death. This is the kind of story that the art and storytelling style are best at telling, and this final 45-minute chunk of gameplay winds up being more satisfying than the entirety of the main game.

If Ancient Bane weren't part of Elephant Games' Haunted Hotel series I probably would have had lower expectations for it. I might have let the developers get away with a meandering plot and mediocre villain. Its pedigree, however, forces anyone familiar with the series to demand better. While a perfectly functional and eminently playable HOG in its own right, Ancient Bane just isn't up to the level of the rest of the series, and as such is the one inessential entry in it since Elephant Games started making them.

Curious about the playthrough that led to this review? It starts below!

Pretty in Pink

Yes, there's a Pretty in Pink hidden object game. I'm as surprised as you are. Based on the John Hughes film of the same name, Pretty in Pink chronicles the last few weeks of high school for Andie, a girl from the poor part of town, as she starts dating a rich kid, causing upset in both of their social circles. The game follows the movie's plot to a remarkable degree of fidelity, presenting key moments from story in the form of static cutscenes, with renderings of the various characters popping up on screen while text lays out their dialogue. While I'm fairly used to seeing popular stories adapted into the HOG medium at this point, there's something oddly refreshing about the lack of alteration featured in this game - the developers simply show a scene from the movie, then ask the player to click on some items or solve a puzzle before moving on to the next scene.

Criteria 1: To what degree do the puzzle screens look like a thrift store vomited on my monitor?

It's fairly dire. Not since Civil War have I played a game with such a random assemblage of nonsense thrown onto each of the game's screens. No matter what the setting is - Andie's bedroom, a school library, or the hall where the prom is taking place, there is no location that is safe from having miscellaneous garbed placed on every surface. The developers put in a passable amount of effort in making sure that the various items at least fit in the location logically - a kitchen will have largely food-based items, while a club will be littered with clothing, drinks, and the like. Every screen will also have a good amount of random ephemera strewn about for no good reason - this isn't a modern HOG, and boy, does it show.

Criteria 2: Are the searches justified by the premise/story?

Strangely, they absolutely are. While I've often joked about the justification for 12:1 screens being that the character must clean up an area in order to find the particular item they're looking for - Pretty In Pink uses this as the explicit motivation for many of its screens. In the world of PiP, there a lot of messy rooms, and a lot of people who are super-responsible about cleaning them up. Whether it's tidying up Harry Dean Stanton's messy kitchen, cleaning up after a kegger in the rich kid's house, or shelving records at Annie Potts' store, the game always makes sure that players understand why they're being asked to search out and click on various items. That's not something a lot of HOGs can claim.

Criteria 3: How well do the various puzzles and object searches meld together to form a coherent whole?

Just as the HOSs are slotted very well into the story, the developers have framed the puzzles largely as representations of characters' thoughts or emotions. There are 'spot the difference' puzzles based around noticing the difference between fantasy and reality, and a few jigsaw puzzles that represent characters figuring things out. None of it is the least bit subtle, but fundamentally works as a logical way of adding gameplay to a tale which - at first glance - couldn't seem a less likely jumping-off point for a video game.

While Pretty in Pink managed to impress me with how completely it managed to fit the film's story into a HOG, it's not without its flaws. The graphics are as rough as one would expect from a decade-old game, and I had trouble getting it to run fullscreen in Windows 7 - which led to a workaround where I had to reduce my monitor's resolution so that the items would be at all identifiable onscreen. It's still a quality game, despite the technical issues - and even has a bonus feature that fans of the film will appreciate: both of the film's endings are included. Pretty in Pink's ending was famously reshot to change who Andie ended up with, but the developers of the game have decided to put that decision in the player's hands - just another way that they demonstrate how dedicated they were to making the best possible version of a Pretty in Pink HOG, which this almost certainly is.

Resident Evil 7 Beginning Hour + VR Observations...

Hearing that RE7's beginning hour had updated for the last time, I decided to check out the final version before the game launches in January. Especially since they'd added the long-promised VR mode!

You can check out the video of my playthrough below, and then please join me further down for some thoughts on the subject of VR control schemes. Specifically, how frustrating it is that developers force a strange, immersion-breaking 'turn using your head' system into their games.

Whether it's Here They Lie, Robinson's Journey, or now Resident Evil 7, developers are addicted to the terrible idea that people want to always move in the direction they're looking. They trouble themselves creating bizarre and jarring movement systems all designed around the premise that people should always be looking at the place they're walking towards - and they're all awkward.

I'm not sure just how they've gone down this route, asking players to turn in 30-degree pie slices, constantly have to recenter themselves, or be unable to glance to the side or backwards without running into a wall. Not only are these systems awkward to play, run counter to the natural experience that VR is supposed to be providing.

How is it so difficult to understand that my controller should be in charge of my character's body, while  my head is free to look wherever I want? Developers understand this just fine in vehicle games - and as a result Battlezone plays like a dream - I can move my tank and aim the cannon in any direction I like, while glancing around my environs to my heart's content. The moment I'm asked to step out of a tank and move into the FPS realm, however, despite the fact that I'm holding a controller in my hands and am perfectly comfortable using it, the developers decide that I can't be trusted to look around freely while walking straight down a hallway.

Perhaps they think that this is some sort of hedge against motion sickness, but I have to say that it's had the opposite effect for me. The only times I've ever been close to queasy playing a VR game is when the game world ceases to obey the normal operations of the physical world it's simulating. Specifically, when the controller pressing forward suggests I should be walking in a straight line, only to have the slightest turn of my head make my course go wobbly - this isn't simulating how people walk, it's quite the opposite, and it's a terrible to a solution to a problem that didn't exist.

Resident Evil 7 doesn't come out for another month - I hope within that time the developers see fit to offer a 'classic FPS' control scheme in the game. Move with the left stick, turn with the right stick, and give me the freedom to look and aim independent of what my body is doing.

Is that really such an ask?

Demon Hunter 3: Revelation

Demon Hunter 3 has a proud pedigree to live up to. While the first two games in the series weren't the best HOGs I've ever played, they were by far the most endearingly strange. The first game will always hold a place in my heart due to its use of a photo of Jeffrey Combs as one of its villains, as well as introducing me to my spirit animal, Scarecrow Dentist. The second game will be remembered forever as having perhaps the most proactive villain in the history of HOGs, who had a penchant for both poison and rocket launchers, which exist at the exact opposite ends of the spectrum of possible murder weapons. While DH3 may not be able to compete with its predecessors in terms of raw oddness, it's a better game than either of them, with great puzzles and a plethora of HOSs.

Also the picture of Jeffrey Combs makes a brief cameo.

Criteria 1: To what degree do the puzzle screens look like a thrift store vomited on my monitor?

Barely at all. The developers at Brave Giant have found themselves a perfect setting for object searches - a crumbling house situated just above a decrepit church that hides the entrance to a secret underground kingdom. I seriously don't have the slightest idea where this game is set. The previous two took place in America, but this title just goes full-on fantasy with its setting, having the player traipse from a modern setting where cops are investigating a murder all the way to a pseudo-medieval village. This wouldn't necessarily be so peculiar if the main character's adventure was taking her to some bizarre and far-off location - Demon Hunters can go where they like, of course - but she's called in by the police officer from the first game, which suggests that things are once again taking place in America. Perhaps I was a little hasty when I suggested this game wasn't as odd as the previous entries in the series.

Criteria 2: Are the searches justified by the premise/story?

Demon Hunter 3 runs the full gamut of HOS types. There are construction scenes, 12:1 scenes, silhouettes, even uncovering screens! While I'm fine with the genre-wide move towards HOPAs, in which developers focus more on the graphic adventure portions of their games, and backburner the hidden object scenes to a certain extent, it's nice to see a game really focus on its hidden object scenes, throwing more than a dozen at the player, with never more than a few minutes of gameplay separating each new HOS. They're all extremely well-designed, and a pleasure to play. Other than a single technical issue, that is. The 12:1 screens have the traditional 'white text for visible items, blue text for items which need to be found or made' structure. This generally accurate and well-handled - even the morphing items have their names change colour when they transform. The problem comes with the silhouette screens - they also feature hidden and transforming items, but there's no signal offered to let the player know which items can simply be found, and which are double-hidden. This adds a needless level of frustration to what was otherwise a perfectly-constructed set of puzzles.

Criteria 3: How well do the various puzzles and object searches meld together to form a coherent whole?

Again, setting is king here - the ruined church and ancient village are perfect places to find elaborate locks, statues that need to be reassembled, and piles of items to search through. A lot of the standards show up - spinning triangle mosaic, gear strings, and marble sorting all make an appearance. The most interesting and notable puzzles are two imports from the Grim Legends series - the first are the storybook puzzles that do such a great job of offering backstory while keeping the player engaged and searching for mysterious symbols.

The second, and far more intriguing borrowed puzzle is the 'psychic battle' from The Dark City. From time to time the game's main character will come across a demonic force, and she'll have to break through their mystical barriers by finding symbols they're incapable of defending against. It's a great little minigame, and I was happy to see it, but its inclusion is more meaningful than developers reusing a successful invention. It, along with some plot details I won't divulge here, suggest that Demon Hunter and Grim Legends are set in the same universe, and fans of both can likely expect a crossover soon.

Speaking as one of those fans, this is incredible news.

Demon Hunter 3 may not be a bubbling cauldron of madness the way the first two games in the series were, but it's a bona fide success, with great puzzles, beautiful HOSs, and a story that ties up all of the last two games' loose ends, while promising more intrigue to come. Demon Hunter really feels like a Brave Giant game, and deserves its place alongside that developer's best titles.

I just realized that I made it through the entire review without mentioning the huge improvement they've made - there's now an indicator onscreen to let players know if there are collectibles to be found on a given screen. If it wasn't a solid enough game already, DH3 goes out of its way to strip all frustration out of trophy hunting!

Demon Hunter 3 can be purchased here!

Want to see the playthrough which led to this review? The first video is below!

A review copy of this game was provided by the publisher!

Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood

Enigmatis ended on something of a cliffhanger - the evil Preacher escaped, leaving the detective to chase him to another town, where he would doubtless to use his hypnotic church bell to restart his serial killing. To be honest, it wasn't a fantastic ending. Enigmatis had been primarily notable for a super solid and surprisingly dark narratives, but I didn't see any logic or value in playing the same story over again. So i was understandably delighted to discover that Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood had something entirely different in store. Picking up two years after the first game, E2 offers a whole new setting, and entirely new villain, and the return of a familiar threat. More importantly, it explores and expands the mythology of the first game in some of the most interesting ways I've seen in a hidden object game.

Now, on to the hidden object criteria!

Criteria 1: To what degree do the puzzle screens look like a thrift store vomited on my monitor?

Almost not at all. The game is set in a long-abandoned tourist park (shades of Eventide!), a territory long-since reclaimed by nature. Every time a HOS pops up, it's in the ruins of a tableau or deep in a lost catacomb. The developers have strewn logical items in sane locations, and the result are beautifully crafted HOSs. There's a total of one questionable screen in the entire game - a single desk location near endgame that has a little bit of size and gravity cheating, but this one flaw is overwhelmed by how massively right the developers get the rest of the hidden object screens.

Criteria 2: Are the searches justified by the premise/story?

It's a solid mix here. There are some 12:1 screens, a number of assembly screens, and even a couple of mini-puzzles. There's a good balance between logical and illogical, and the assembly screens are some of the best I've ever encountered. By far the most impressive is one sequence in which the player is asked to use a black light to find invisible ink symbols on scattered pieces of paper, then use those glowing symbols as a guide to reassemble the code-sheet they're drawn on. I can easily overlook a couple of generic 12:1 screens if the rest are going to be this detailed and inspired.

Criteria 3: How well do the various puzzles and object searches meld together to form a coherent whole?

It's not just coherent - this is one of the strongest stories I've ever encountered in a hidden object game. The various elaborate locks and hidden codes make perfect sense in the context of a holiday park that has been redesigned by a murderous madman, and even the beyond objects that the player can seek out for an achievement make perfect sense as part of the narrative - instead of just looking for a bonus transforming item with no connection to the story, the player is tasked with catching glimpses of the illusions that the villain has been using to lure people to their deaths. It's rare to see a developer put this level of care into every aspect of gameplay, and Artifex Mundi should be lauded for their accomplishment.

Enigmatis' great addition to the traditional HOG structure makes a return appearance here, and the developers have outdone themselves in improving it. Digging out pieces of evidence and figuring out how they fit into the big picture of the case is always going to be a satisfying experience, and this is one of the best examples of that mechanic I've ever seen. Enigmatis 2 also swipes a key element from Nightmares From the Deep - a door that has to be unlocked by finding metal tokens, and a mysterious figure who offers a bit of backstory with every piece of the lock the player turns over.

This is one of the thematically darkest HOGs I've ever played. There's mass-murder, demon worship, psychological torture... It goes even further than the previous game in the series, and that was already a flat-out horror title. Really, Enigmatis 2 improves on the first game in every way - the graphics are gorgeous, the story has a number of big surprises, and the presentation is top-notch. This is the third Artifex Mundi hidden object game I've played on the Xbox One, and I'm still impressed by how natural it is to use a controller for what had previously been a mouse-focused genre. Navigation is a breeze, the inventory control is better, and puzzles have all been tweaked to ensure they take full advantage of the thumbsticks and buttons to create more natural interfaces. If a slight drop in hidden object scene precision is the price I have to pay for better controls in every other respect, that's a deal I'm happy to make.

I can't say enough good things about Enigmatis 2's story, though. From its creepy opening to the thrilling conclusion (and satisfying epilogue), it impressed me more than anything else out there in the HOG genre. There are horrific discoveries, dramatic battles, tense setpiece puzzles - basically everything anyone could want from a graphic adventure. I'd recommend this HOG to anyone, and I'm eagerly looking forward to playing the next game in the series.

Curious about the playthrough that led to this review? Check out the first part below!

A review copy of this game was provided by the developer!

Dishonored 2!

No review of this one (as it's not a hidden object game, obvs), but I thought it was worth mentioning here that I recently did a playthrough of the game, which is available over at the YouTube channel!

Here's the first part!

Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom

I just can't get enough of Alchemy-themed games, it would seem. In addition to my well-established love of the Atelier series of games - JRPGs in which an alchemist has to create her way out of troublesome situations - I've enjoyed every one of the botany/alchemy games that Artifex Mundi has put out. Lost Grimoires is the newest addition to that miniseries, joining the first two Grim Legends titles and the Eventide series by putting the player in control of a woman who uses her expert knowledge of the natural world to craft the potions and poultices that allow her to overcome every obstacle in her path.

Criteria 1: To what degree do the puzzle screens look like a thrift store vomited on my monitor?

To the most minor degree. This is the first title I've played from World Loom Games, but they're obviously extremely skilled at the fundamentals of HOG design. The game isn't exactly packed with hidden object scenes, but the ones it offers are - with a single exception - utterly gorgeous. The developers have created natural locations for hidden objects to appear in, and play extremely fair with item sizing and placement. I come to Artifex Mundi games for stellar HOS construction, and this title does their track record proud. Only one screen is badly-drawn, with an assortment of giant thimbles and objects that don't match the lighting or geography very well. Honestly, it's not even that bad a screen - and I'd probably give a pass to a game made entirely out of screens like it - but since the rest of the game's HOS are so beautifully drawn, this single mediocre one stands out like a sore thumb.

Criteria 2: Are the searches justified by the premise/story?

There are a good mix of HOS types here, with most of them completely justified within the plot. Sure, there are a couple of 12:1 scenes, but by and large the developers have gone the extra mile and come up with ways to ensure the HOSs feel like part of the world. There are mini-puzzle screens and integrated screens, but by far the most impressive are the construction screens. I've always been partial to HOSs in which the player is asked to grab all of the parts of an object they need, and Lost Grimoires offers some of the best I've ever seen. The key to their success is a wonderful presentation flourish, where all of the pieces the player has found appear on the screen as parts of an exploded diagram, which then flies together, forming the object they've created. It's a small detail, but it really makes the player feel like they've accomplished something at the end of a HOS.

Criteria 3: How well do the various puzzles and object searches meld together to form a coherent whole?

Lost Grimoires features one of the best-structured stories I've seen in a hidden object game. It hits a lot of familiar beats - an orphaned child, family secrets, royal conspiracies - honestly, with the alchemist main character this winds up feeling more like Grim Legends 3 than The Dark City did. While the story may be familiar, the execution is anything but. The game is broken up into a series of three-screen areas, each one with a number of puzzles to solve and HOSs to complete before the player moves onto the next one. This keeps the story moving along at a great clip, with never more than ten minutes or so going by before the next plot revelation. This means that the player will never have to do much backtracking, or suffer from a bloated inventory which had them trying to figure out which of fifteen items they're supposed to use in order to solve a given puzzle.

Most puzzle solving is done through the alchemy mechanic, which is a fantastic creation. Rather than having the player return to crafting stations over and over to assemble the game's dozen-plus recipes, they simply collect reagents and then transmute them into a useful item through a standardized puzzle interface. In each one the player is shown a set of interlocking rings with spheres on them representing the five key elemental forces - every alchemical product requires that the elements be arranged in a certain order to be completed, and it's up to the player to spin the rings and swap the spheres until the puzzle matches the hint image. It's not a completely original puzzle - I've played version of it in plenty of other games. The genius of Lost Grimoires, though, is the decision to assign a specific puzzle to represent a repeated action, and then present the player with increasingly difficult iterations of that puzzle for the entirety of the game. It makes the player feel like they're using a real skill to interact with the game's world, one that improves as they make their way through the game.

Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom is a great game. The art is universally high-quality, the puzzles fit perfectly into the world the developers have created, and the story kept me intrigued all the way through. I don't know if this is going to be the first title in a new series, or just a one-off adventure, but I look forward to whatever the developers have planned next, since they've shown that they can put out a top-notch hidden object game.

Disclaimer - A review copy of this game was provided by the publisher.