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Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal
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Graphics & Sound:
If you previously played Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion, you pretty much know what to expect from Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD. The graphics are well done and the items look as they should. In the previous game, I recall having to deal with some really tiny items in locations that had too much crammed into them, but I never encountered that in Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD, which was a great improvement.
In this case, Detective Carrie Chase is dealing with the death of one of her own, Captain Cross, her supervisor. It seems Capt. Cross was on the trail of some bad guys and had uncovered corruption in his own department, which cost him his life. Chase is now working with handsome Detective Hodgins and their police work will once again have Carrie crossing paths with Jessica Catechi from Crime of Fashion. Most of the characters have pretty believable voicework, except for Ms. Catechi, who sports a fake-o Italian accent this go round. She didn’t sound like this in the last game, so I am not sure why the change, but at least the characters do acknowledge it later on in the game when she fesses up and sounds normal again.
You’ll hear background music in some of the levels and map areas, and not others. The music works for the setting and sounds appropriately dark and intense and the sound effects reflect the setting, such as honking cars and such on a city street or a clang of a nautical bell and watery sounds at the docks. It all works well for the game. |
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Gameplay:
Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD is predominantly a hidden object game with a nice selection of mini-games to keep things fresh. You’ll go from location to location, picking up clues to help you solve the mystery at hand. You’ll visit the police station, Carrie’s apartment, a pawn shop, a butcher, a dance club and more. For the most part, the items you’ll be collecting make sense and those that are colored green are key items that will require further investigation. You’ll once again use your tools of the trade, which you must first pick up in Carrie’s apartment - your fingerprint duster, flashlight, magnifying glass and fluorescent light. You can use these to find hidden blood stains, fingerprints, items in dark spaces and smaller items. You’ll use these tools a lot.
Once you obtain the key evidence, you’ll go back to the police lab to further investigate it. Mini-games range from piecing together torn documents, to matching fingerprints, tire tracks and license plates, to finding the differences between blood and trace evidence and finally, finding similar words in documents to match handwriting. It’s good fun and a nice switch from the hidden object scenes. My least favorite was finding the differences, but honestly, if you get stuck, you can always choose to solve the mini-game by clicking the Solve button. All in all, I really liked that the mini-games took the objects you found and intertwined them with actual police forensics (well, game forensics, but you know what I mean). It was a great effort by the devs and I appreciated it.
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Difficulty:
You can choose to play Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD in either Relaxed Mode (with no timer) or in Timed Mode, but even on Timed Mode, you have plenty of time to accomplish your tasks. You also have a Hint button that fills with regular frequency and , although the items are sneakily hidden, nothing is out and out cheap, like an acorn the size of a cumulus cloud. Personally, I found the difficulty just about right for a hidden object game and a veteran player of this genre of games should breeze through this title in a handful of sittings. But that’s the way it should be – good, quick fun.
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Game Mechanics:
Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD uses the standard iPad gestures and, consequently, you will find yourself doing lots of tapping. You’ll tap to pick up objects, tap to locate the differences between two examples of evidence, and tap to move around pieces of a picture to be reassembled. It’s pretty basic stuff and anyone used to these types of games will jump right in. I will admit that I immensely dislike the dark level where you are forced to use your flashlight to see objects, but it fits really well into the storyline, so I can’t argue much. It’s just that you can’t really keep your finger on the flashlight or magnifying glass because your finger will obscure what you are trying to see. It works best if you tap to place the tool, then tap again to place it in a new location, instead of skimming it over the scene. I really enjoyed the new mini-game where you had to rapidly pick out the portion of the license plate (or fingerprint or tire/shoe track) that is displayed in the right corner from a group of similar images, and the handwriting matching mini-game was also quite clever. I just really like how well the developers looped in the forensic work with applicable mini-games. It’s very clever stuff and makes for a really engaging game experience.
The only downside to Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD is the fact that sometimes you can click an object two, three or even four times and still not pick it up. This is incredibly frustrating, when you know an object is in your list, but it won’t recognize your taps - despite tapping it over and over. The developers need to work on collision detection, but that is my only complaint.
Overall, I really enjoyed Masters of Mystery: Blood of Betrayal HD. It’s fun and clever and, aside from the frustration from missed taps, it’s a great hidden object game. If you can look past this issue, you’ll have fun with it.
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
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