Bigfoot: Hidden Giant is another hidden object/adventure game to be released on the iPad that tries to stand out from the background noise that consists of pretty much every other game in this sub-genre, but, for the most part ends up creating a story with a fairly pushy agenda and confusing game mechanics.

Visually speaking, Bigfoot isn't bad at all. The various locations you will visit look nice and each backdrop has a lot of detail painted into it. Even scenes that you will return to over the course of the game, like the main character's house, will have enough differences between visits to keep the visual experience from feeling too drab and repetitive.

While the audio-aspects of Bigfoot aren't quite on par with the visuals, the game is fully voice-acted and the performances aren't too bad, but there are some definite pieces of wooden dialogue in the game. As for the background music and sound effects, both are more-or-less forgettable.

Bigfoot: Hidden Giant puts you in control of Linda, a magazine employee, who is sent off to a nearby nature preserve where there are reports of Sasquatch sightings. While looking for the elusive missing link, Linda starts to uncover what appears to be a chemical spill that seems to be connected to a local plant.

As Linda continues her investigation, it becomes clear that someone thinks she is getting too close, and when she approaches her boss with the chemical spill information, he insists that she stay on task with the Bigfoot sightings. Could her boss somehow be involved in the spill and cover up, or does he simply think the Bigfoot story will have a bigger payoff at the magazine stands?

As I said, Bigfoot: Hidden Giant is a hidden object/adventure game, but it tries to handle the combination of the genres in a different way than most fans of these games are used to. Where most titles with this setup will have you find inventory items in hidden object screens and use them in standard adventure-style puzzles, Bigfoot blurs the lines by not confining you to a single screen when looking for objects, and making it so that several inventory items can come out of a single search.

What results is a game that tells you what inventory items you need to find, as well as throwing in a good number of other items to look for that you don't actually need. I will say that this feels very odd and different from any hidden object or adventure game that I've played before. Most adventure titles simply don't tell you what inventory items you are looking for. You are supposed to figure that out based on what puzzles the game throws at you. Most full-blown hidden object games keep you on a screen and give you a list of items to find, and after that, you simply move to a new screen.

Usually, when these genres are blended, you pull out an inventory item from a hidden object screen and go find where to use it outside of those screens. Here though, you simply have a list of items to find. You have free reign to explore the areas available to you in order to find everything on the list. Some of those items appear on the inventory list and one of the items you need to "find" can be an action like "cut the bag down" or "make coffee" or even "load the boat."

There are two aspects about Bigfoot: Hidden Giant that make it a tough game. The first is figuring out just how atypical it is for a hidden object/adventure game. The second is realizing and remembering that you won't necessarily find all of the items you are looking for on the screen that you are on. I couldn't begin to say how many times I stared at a single screen trying to find some missing object, only to suddenly think about looking somewhere else for it. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's just so different from other games of this type that it forces the player to rethink and untrain some of the techniques forged by past games of this type.

Bigfoot offers a couple of tools to help the player on this new style of gameplay. One is the standard Hint button that will highlight an item you are looking for, or direct you to the screen that contains that item. The other is a Bigfoot button that when pressed will show you all of the places to tap in order to go to a different location. There were several times when I couldn't find an item only to discover a location that I hadn't been to before.

I have mixed feelings about Bigfoot: Hidden Giant. On the one hand, I commemorate the attempt to further blur the line between these two genres. It does a good job of doing that. On the other hand, that change produces a pretty drastic learning curve for anyone who has played other hidden object/adventure titles. Is this new style of gameplay better or worse than the more standard version? At first I thought it was worse, but after getting back into the game a few times and getting used to the changes, I wasn't so sure.

In my mind, Bigfoot: Hidden Giant feels a lot like Microsoft Office 2007. For a long time, we were trained to use Windows menus as they have appeared in Windows for many years. When Office 2007 came out, Microsoft assured us that the Ribbon was more intuitive, cleaner and better. Is it? Does it make using Office easier? It's still hard to say - part of me feels like we have just been retrained to use a new type of U.I. like we were trained on the old one.

Is Bigfoot's way of blending the two genres better? It's definitely different and armed with the the knowledge that it is different, I would recommend Bigfoot to fans of this type of game. If you, like me, go into it blindly without realizing how it is different, then there is a good chance you won't like it and won't give it much of a chance.