Righteous Kill 2: Revenge of the Poet Killer HD has pretty good graphics. You’ll be investigating a series of murders in the New York City area, so your crime scenes will include typical NY locations like the subway, back alleys, Central Park and a taxi, but you’ll also find yourself looking for clues in a nightclub, an Asian shop, the docks, a warehouse, a gun shop, an apartment, a rundown hotel and even a drug lab. Items look the way they should and although they are cleverly hidden, they aren’t done to a ridiculously small or large scale, so it works well.

There’s a decent dramatic musical score playing in the background which sounds either the same or very similar to the first game in the series. However, there were no voiceovers whatsoever and these were sadly missed. While the dialogue is printed on the screen, there’s just something special about having voiceovers. I also have a minor gripe about the sound effects. Every time you collect an object, the sound of a picture being taken occurs. If you pick up a bunch of objects in rapid succession, it can get aggravating. When you leave a crime scene, it sounds like the cork on a bottle of champagne is being popped – odd. While in the police lab, strange sounds occur like something sounding like a ventilator in a hospital. However, there is great improvement over the last game’s sound effects which seemed redundant, continuous and often, out of place.

The gameplay in Righteous Kill 2: Revenge of the Poet Killer HD is fairly standard hidden object fare, with a good number of interesting puzzles to solve, in addition to gathering items. You’ll be called out to a number of different crime scenes and there, you’ll gather items listed at the bottom of your screen. Items gathered may result in further work back at the lab and will include puzzles such as reconstructing a torn picture or shredded document; comparing a set of videos to find the differences between them; facial recognition where you look at a subject, then reconstruct their face from memory selecting from the available sets of possible eyes, noses, mouths, etc.; sequence matching to determine DNA matches; and finally, my favorite and the most frustrating puzzle – confining the hacker. Here, you’ll have a grid with a pulsing blip indicating a hacker in your network. You must attempt to pin him down by boxing him in, done by tapping areas to create a blockade. The concept is easy, but the execution can be difficult.

Overall, gameplay is interesting, and although you’ll revisit certain crime scenes several times, there are so many objects scattered about that you don’t get bored and end up picking up the same stuff over and over. Again, another refinement and improvement over the game’s predecessor.

The difficulty level in Righteous Kill 2: Revenge of the Poet Killer HD is about average for a hidden object/ adventure title. You’ll have a Hint button in the form of a detective’s badge in the top left corner and if you get stuck, you can tap it and an object will be highlighted. Active areas will sparkle to let you know there’s a hidden object scene to further delve into. Puzzles will also give you the opportunity to skip them if you don’t feel like completing them. This may cost you an achievement, but I personally don’t care about achievements in games like this.

Righteous Kill 2: Revenge of the Poet Killer HD will have you tapping the screen to pick up objects, but you’ll also sweep the screen when you dust for fingerprints, slide objects around to reconstruct items, and you’ll have to use the flashlight in your kit to navigate around completely dark hidden object screens. These were always the toughest because you would slide your sphere of light around the screen, sometimes obscuring the item you were seeking with your own finger. But hey, there’s really not a better way to do something of this nature, so I can’t fault the game for it.

There’s also a place late in the game where some pretty heavy stuff happens and the screens goes black for a bit. I thought the game had crashed on me and when I tapped it, the game jumped ahead, seemingly skipping a section. Someone crucial had died and I was left confused as to what happened. Hopefully, this was a one-off deal and isn’t something other people have encountered, but it was a bit discouraging.

Overall, I enjoy crime-solving, forensics-based hidden object/ adventure games and Righteous Kill 2 is no exception. It’s a fun mystery with a few surprises and bumps along the way, but if you enjoyed the first one, you’ll want to see how the story advances.