Installation & Introduction
This is the third in the Mysterious City series, and was released on the 31st July 09; so it’s a relatively new game. However in terms of Hidden Object games it’s already fairly old, with new ones being released almost every day. (Check out Big Fish Games HERE for a list of Hidden Object Games that is over 300 games long, that have been released over the last year). The download size is 50Mb, and once it’s installed the game is 53.6Mb in size.
The Story:
Pack your bags and head for the dazzling lights of the Las Vegas Strip in Mysterious City Vegas.Your VIP suite awaits, but with unsolved crimes around every corner, you're here with a mission: Use your detective skills to uncover over 1000 hidden objects and apprehend a casino thief!
Clues abound as you stake out casino tables and opulent Vegas locations. Casino mini-games including cards, slots and bingo take you to the heart of the action...and help you earn extra points! Just be careful who you trust - the thief could be closer than you think in Mysterious City Vegas.
Reference accessed HERE on the 23rd October
The Game:
When you first enter the game you can set it up by going into the options menu; here you can adjust the sound effects and music levels as well as change the aspect ratio to wide screen and windowed mode. There’s also a toggle to change the mouse cursor and turn the hints on or off. The main menu also has a gallery button where you can check to see what wallpapers you’ve unlocked, though at the start of the game this is inaccessible due to the lack of any wallpapers.
You can create multiple profiles in this game making it an ideal family game, though I wouldn't recommend it to the younger kids due to the Casino games. (Though that depends upon how you feel about your children playing games that could be considered gambling games). Once your profile is accepted you are asked if you want to play the game in relaxed mode. Accepting this doesn’t mean the game isn’t timed; on the contrary, the game is still timed, but you get three times the amount of time that you get if you decide to play the timed game. The relaxed mode gives you 134 minutes to complete the section and the timed mode 45 minutes.
If you select the relaxed mode you have plenty of time to complete all the levels within the first stage, the non seek and find puzzles are relatively easy to complete and leave you plenty of time to peruse the main hidden object puzzles. Even if you used the hint button to find all of the hidden objects, you still wouldn't run out of time because using a hint takes away only 2 minutes of your allocated time and if you make repeated attempts at clicking for objects but fail, you are supposed to lose 30 seconds, but I tried this several times and didn’t appear to lose any time.
There are 8 jigsaw puzzles (the sliding boxes type), 7 spot the difference puzzles, plus three types of casino games that includes Jacks or Better Poker, Slots Machine and Pingo. The game is split up into several sections; each section separated by a storyboard cartoon that tells you a very basic story about Dr Ellis and her visit to Vegas to apprehend some thieves who are ripping off the casino. Which I’m not going to elaborate on here – you can either discover the story as it unfolds in the game or check out my screen captures as I’ve taken screenshots of all the cartoon storyboards - see above. The game includes 16 wallpapers of scenes in and around Vegas (I've posted several below). These are awarded throughout the game once you've achieved specific targets; the first being awarded after completing the first two hidden object levels.
Each section of the game consists of a couple of the casino games mentioned above plus at least one jigsaw and one spot the difference level, the rest of the levels are hidden object levels which come in two forms; find the named object and find the shape. You may find you have to use a torch on some of the harder levels, which makes it much harder to spot the objects; also, if you use a hint, you'll have to look very carefully for the indicator as it doesn't stay for long.
Once you’ve played one of the casino levels you’ll see that it has been unlocked on the main menu page. This allows you to play that particular casino game whenever you want to. All three casino games are unlocked by stage 2 of the games.
Casino Games Help:
Jacks or Better:
Pingo:
Reels:
Wallpapers
You can earn up to 16 wallpapers by completing hidden object and puzzle levels. The following are just a few of the examples you will get:
Game Features:
• Find Over 1000 Clues!
• Unlock & Play Casino Games For Extra Points!
• Apprehend A Casino Thief!
• Explore The Las Vegas Strip
• Earn 16 wallpapers
System Requirements:
OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista
CPU: P750
Memory: 256 MB
Video & Images:
You can watch a short video of Mysterious City: Vegas HERE and check out lots more in game images as well as all of the 16 wallpapers you can earn throughout this game HERE as a slideshow and HERE with all the images on one page. To see the image enlarged just click on the image over at photobucket (not the images posted here).
Conclusion
My preparation for writing this review included reading the user reviews from gamers that had already played this game. I found that there was an overriding feeling that the game wasn’t very challenging and in some cases very boring. Playing it myself I'd partially agree with this, though I wouldn't call it boring. It really depends upon how much of a challenge you want from a game. Making it too hard can create frustration and leave a game unfinished, whereas being too easy enables you to complete the game in record time. Thankfully replaying already completed levels on a second re-run, you'll find the hidden objects are different ones, making this game replayable for at least a couple of times. The Casino games are easy to play and are also replayable because they rely upon a random generator There's no skill involved and are really just based on luck. I played them with little thought and actually finished most of the casino levels with lots of credits. The other mini games (spot the difference and jigsaws) were also too easy(IMO) The graphics are okay and the music works with this game * see below for information about changing the music.
Personally I think this game is okay for newcomers to this genre; those with lots of experience will find it too easy. I completed nearly 20 levels within the space of 2 half hour demos. The amazing thing was when I installed today's giveaway over the demo's I used to play this game, all my progress was saved which would lead me to believe that there is some record kept in the registry. This was confirmed when I copied the installed game onto one of my memory sticks and transferred it over to another computer. The profiles were gone, but the game worked perfectly as a full version, so this is a free standing game. If you are looking for a more challenging game, there are many recently released H.O.G’s that are superior to this game and which can be purchased cheaper (e.g. Big Fish Games); however, that said it is free for today and it does work okay.
The same formula has been uses in the preceding two games (Cairo and Prague), so those who downloaded them will be familiar with the layout and mini games from today’s game giveaway, (apart from the Casino games)
There’s really nothing wrong with this game apart from it being a little too easy, but that was based upon playing the relaxed mode. I didn’t have any time left after playing two separate demo’s of the game to play the timed mode, which probably would make this game more interesting. I’d score it the same as the previous HOG games that we’d been given, i.e. 7 out of 10. That includes points for the gorgeous wallpapers (some of them at least), and the re-playability of the game.
Other Information
Hidden Object games are still all the rage at the moment, evidenced by the fact that most game houses seem to be adding new HOG's almost daily, whereas there are hardly any free versions available (unless you're lucky enough to catch the game giveaway of the day). However I have found one free HOG, called Great Secrets Da Vinci which you can download from HERE . The following are screen captures from the game courtesy of Gametop:
N.B.:
Please note that Gametop are now rated yellow by McAfee Site Advisor, they do include checked tick boxes during installation, which if not unchecked will install toolbars into your browser an change your home page to Gametop. all this can be avoided by making sure you uncheck the appropriate boxes. also they do have pop ups so make sure your pop up blocker is turned on. Once you've done this the installed game is absolutely safe., though your browser will still be opened when you shut the game down; however, this is rectified by closing the browser down.
* You can change the games music by going into the music folder located within the main folder – there are six files, one for the menu one for the map and four for the levels. You’ll need to convert the files you are going to use (If you plan to change the music) into the .ogg format as well as change the names to the ones you are replacing. I'd advise backing up the ones your replacing just in case you wish to revert to the original game . There are several audio conversion tools available free from the freeware library which you can find HERE :)