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Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini
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Graphics & Sound:
Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini is a delightful hidden object/adventure game taking the history of Harry Houdini and the mystery surrounding his death and crafting an eerie and compelling storyline for the game. Your travels on this case will take you around the world and back through time visiting places such as Houdini's home, the circus where he and his beloved wife, Bess, first met, the hospital where he supposedly died and many, many more.
Each level is nicely designed with nifty background animations to make things even creepier, like a crackling fire or a scurrying pest. For the most part, items look like they should, although some are really well hidden and quite difficult to spot. In between levels, you will experience a flutter of playing cards that menacingly cover the screen and I must say, the first time I entered through Houdini's creaking metal gates in front of his home, I got a chill. The game has really got the creep factor down pat.
Background sound effects work well to set the mood and mostly consist of punches of sound to indicate when you find an object of interest. A blue shimmer to an area will indicate that you need to explore further and Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini likes to hide things in drawers, under rugs and in other obscure places, so be warned.
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Gameplay:
Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini is one part hidden object and one part adventure game, since it combines puzzles and such into the gameplay. You begin your quest when the apparition of Bess Houdini, Harry's wife, appears to you requesting your help in contacting her long-dead husband. Bess and Harry had a code and agreed to meet up after death, but Harry never made contact. Your quest will bring you face-to-ghostly-face with characters such as the aforementioned Bess, Harry himself, his friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and some of Doyle's relatives, J. Gordon Whitehead, who was Houdini's supposed killer, plus a famous medium of the time and several other contemporaries of the famed mentalist.
Levels will often present you with a list of items to locate in the level, however some will be vague descriptions of items and they will be colored green, whereas the others are in black. Anything colored in blue is hidden from sight. Certain items will be inventory items that you will use for a puzzle later on to progress the story. Ravens are scattered around each area and, when you pick them up, they will provide hints for you, either locating a certain item and highlighting it or showing you what the item looks like, your choice. There are also shamrocks scattered everywhere and if you locate 40 of the 70 in the game, you can unlock Unlimited Mode, which is composed of select key levels and you can return and search for items there. They aren't really unlimited, since you will go through 3 or 4 lists of items, but it's added gameplay regardless.
Puzzles are probably a breeze for gamers well-versed in adventure games, but I am more of a hidden object player, myself, so some of them were a bit tricky for me. They included things like slide puzzles, switch flipping puzzles, standard puzzle piece puzzles and more.
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Difficulty:
When you first begin the game, you are given a choice between playing the game as a casual player or as a more experienced one. Casual has your hint meter (number of ravens) filling more frequently and I must admit that I switched to casual not long after starting, because I found the game to be more along the lines of an adventure than a straight-up hidden object. In other words, objects would be lying around that you would need to utilize to access certain areas. Since I don't play a lot of adventure games on a regular basis, my mind doesn't typically think along the same lines that an adventure gamer would, so I found playing on the more casual level to be more fun. If you want additional challenge, by all means, play the game on the Normal setting, which has fewer hints and the hint meter filling at a far slower pace.
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Game Mechanics:
The controls in Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini are fairly simple and involve tapping, sliding and swiping. For the most part, you'll be tapping to pick up objects you locate and tapping to place them where they need to be, if they are one of the inventory items. Some items will need to be combined in order to be used and you will need to slide each one to the correct area of the HUD and then press the + button to create a combined item.
Sometimes you will locate all of the items on your list and then you'll have to find an inventory item that will flash up on the screen, and while these items always advanced the story, it didn't seem logical to me why the player would need to search for that item at the specific time other than the game simply requiring it. In other words, sometimes it didn't make sense to me why an item was needed and often, at those times, I would need to resort to using a hint raven to locate it. However, I believe that this is because I was playing on the casual setting. Before I changed it to casual, these items required me to search for them without prompting.
There would also be times when the tapping detection would become aggravating, such as when I would spot an item located close to the edge of an area and tapping to try to pick up the object would result in backing out of the area. This always happened in one of the spots within another layer of the area, such as in a drawer that had to be opened and the like. Not a huge deal, but a little aggravating.
Overall, I really enjoyed Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini and I learned so much about the life of this truly mysterious man. I think it's great that MumboJumbo creates fun and engaging games that teach you something as well. If you like Adventure with Hidden Object, you'll enjoy Midnight Mysteries: Haunted Houdini, but if you are strictly a Hidden Object fan, you may want to look elsewhere, unless you want to broaden your gaming prowess. |
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
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