Mystery Stories

This is my first hidden object game for DS so cannot give you a comparison against others games on the market BUT suffice to say this is great.

There are two different ways to play the game either Adventure, takes you through all levels or Free Play, allows you to access already played locations from the adventure mode.

Concentration is required as some objects are quite well hidden and not easy to spot but you do find a great sense of satisfaction when you complete a level.

As you move through various levels you can gain extra time and hints so if you really are struggling with an object you can get a pointer as to it's hiding place.

Great fun for kids and adults alike, my 8 year old daughter thinks it's fantastic.

As hidden object games go, this one for the D S works well. The storylines are really thin, but just about hold the individual puzzles together. Most scenes are clear enough to see all the objects, though I did find I had to put the D S brightness up to max to stand the best chance. Some objects and one or two screens were extremely hard to work with though.

Interspersed with the hidden object scenes are other puzzles such as spot the differences, basic jigsaw puzzles, traffic-jam-type puzzles where you have to move blocks in order to get a specific item from one side of the screen to another. These could be frustrating as sometimes objects still moved even though the stylus was pointing at a new object - I suspect this may be due to the (in)sensitivity of my rather old d s screen. But even with the screen cleaned and buffed, it was quite hard to pick items up first time, and I often lost time through the number of attempts it took to pick up certain objects. Frustrating. And the chances are that when you return to a given scene, you will also be looking for a high proportion of the same items within that scene that you looked for on your previous visit - if you see what I mean.

Another thing I particularly didn't like was that unlike most p c-based games, once an object was found, it just dimmed, it didn't disappear from the screen.

Also on my minus list, are the way the mini-games are presented. Make one mistake, or have one spot on the D S where your stylus isn't picked up correctly, and you get a game over. Having said that, you can immediately return to the mini-game without a penalty. And if you don't like the mini-game, you can just click forward to skip it - but you can't return to it to complete it later.

Basically, this is a great game provided you like repetitive screens, aren't too bothered with storyline, and aren't trying to tap the screen quietly while someone next to you is asleep! It didn't take long to whip through it; and I won't be getting rid of it just yet as it's a good chewing-gum-for-the-brain kind of game. Not enough of a challenge though.

This game is hours of mind stimulation,i would highly recommend cannot put it down once i started playing.