Giveaway of the Day - Mysterious City: Vegas

Mysterious City Vegas

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 5oMb, and once it’s installed the game is 53.6Mb in size. There is no shortcut installed so make a note of where the game is being installed to. The default is C:Games\Mysterious City Vegas, but you may find that it tries to install itself inside previous giveaways. You can find a short tutorial in the game discussion forums on how to create desktop and Start menu shortcuts HERE .

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 * (see the end of review for more info about the music) 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. On starting the game you have to create a profile. You can create multiple profiles if you wish, making this an ideal family game. 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 times; on the contrary, the game is timed still, 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 could whiz through the levels using multiple hints and still not run out of time. Using a hint will take away 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 rotation type), 7 spot the difference puzzles, plus three types of casino games which includes Jacks or Better poker, Slot Machine and Pingo. . The game is split up into several sections; each section separated by a story board cartoon that tells you the very limited story about Dr Ellis and her visit to Vegas to apprehend some thieves. (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 16 images that you can earn. The first one is awarded after completing two levels. I’ve posted several of the wallpapers over in the games forums together with instructions on how to play the three casino games. If you can’t read the instructions (the image may be too small), you can either follow the link to the images below (which are a higher resolution than the ones I’ve posted in the forums ,strong>HERE,/strong>, or go to the installed folder which can be found within the images folder inside the tutorials folder) .

Each section of the game consists of each one of the casino games mentioned above plus at lease one jigsaw and a spot the difference level, the rest are seek levels which come in two forms, find the named object and find the shape. There are also some levels where you have to search using a torch. 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.

I’ve posted this review over in the games discusion forums [url=http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/6405?replies=1#post-66507][b]HERE[/b][/url], you can see the images I’ve posted which include instructions for playing the three casino games, plus several of the wallpapers that you can earn.

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 loads of in game images as well as 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 it.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

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 finish most of the casino levels with lots of credits. The other mini games (spot the difference and jigsaws) were also too easy. The graphics are okay and the music works with this game *.

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 transferredit over to another computer. The profiles were one, but the game worked perfectly, so this is afree 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.

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.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

[b][u]Alternative s[/u][/b]:

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 . 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.

N.B. * 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

I wish we could edit our posts, lol.

note from moderator – is that better