Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2

In Brief

Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 is a hidden Object game with mini game puzzles.

Installation:

Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 downloads to a 164 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set-up file and a read me). Those with multiple hard drives can save games on any drive they wish. The newly installed game is 199 MB in size. The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed by the user if you prefer:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Insider Tales - The Stolen Venus 2

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop, three of which can be safely deleted (Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game which vary each week). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you uncheck the box when the additional tasks window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window)

Introduction:

A world-renowned painting has been stolen! Help Francesca find the masterpiece and convict the culprit! The luxury cruise ship, The Empire, is boarded by rich tourists, a world-renowned art-exhibition, and a thief. Soon the highlight of the exhibition is stolen and Francesca di Porta, the famous detective, is disturbed in her well-earned holiday to investigate undercover and prevent a panic among the passengers in Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2! Solve the case using your Hidden Object talents.

Reference accessed HERE. 23rd February 2018

The Game:

You might think that if a large, priceless statue is stolen in a cruise ship the police would simply prevent the ship from docking and conduct a thorough search until they find it. But where would be the fun in that? Where would be the opportunity for hidden object searching for clues in tourist locations across the Mediterranean? Maybe Italian police really do handle things differently. In Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2, a new adventure game from the developer Intenium, Detective di Porta indulges in a little pizza making and even surreptitiously enters a Greek archaeological site on her leisurely course towards nabbing the culprit.

Your cursor is your friend here. Sparkly areas might be hiding hidden object scenes, where you'll be given a list of objects to find. Sometimes you'll have to manipulate the scene by using an object on an area to uncover more hidden objects. You'll usually receive an inventory item from a successful hidden object scene, and you can also pick up inventory items in regular scenes. Watch out for your cursor's shape changing to indicate if you can pick something up or zoom in on it. Most of the puzzles are solved entirely by left clicking with the mouse, but occasionally, usually for tile swapping and assembly puzzles, you may need to right click to rotate pieces.

If you're getting sick of hidden object adventures where it's always midnight, the crimes are disturbing and probably occult, and the "happy ending" is stopping the serial killer at his seventh human sacrifice, this light and frothy cruise ship romp might just lift your spirits. True, it doesn't have the big budgets of many other series, but it's done well in prioritizing. The art is clean and crisp and easy on the searching eyes. I've played enough games with horrific voice acting not to feel like I'm missing much by that missing feature. The length is fairly decent as well, between three and four hours, depending on how much you use skips and hints.

The game's big drawback is some sloppiness with the writing or perhaps the translation, with some glaring mistakes. Not only is this unprofessional, but in a few cases, it actually causes confusion. At one point, the detective is presented with what appears to be some boxes under a tarp. I tried clicking on it. "I can lift it with my bare hands" said the detective. But nothing happened. I tried clicking again. She said the same thing. I was worried I had hit a bug and consulted a walkthrough. From context, she should have been saying "I can't lift it with my bare hands" and it ought to have been a clue to find some other method of lifting the tarp. The game also is fairly light on instructions for solving puzzles. If you're the kind of person who considers figuring out what to do to be part of the fun, this will be a feature and not a bug, however.

Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 doesn't do anything Earth-shattering. You're not going to be rushing to write about this in your diary or kept up at night by dreams about it. In fact, in some ways it's a nice trip down memory lane to the kind of hidden object game that got me hooked on the genre in the first place, before success brought the big budget hits that aimed to tell huge, sweeping stories with gorgeous art, amazing soundtracks, and often, huge amounts of creepiness. It's nice to know there's still a place in gaming for a humble little stress reliever like this one. (Although the identity of the villain is a little bit creepy... did not see that one coming.)

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Joye April 2, 2011. Reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 24th February 2018.

Other Reviews and Videos of Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2:

You can see Big Fish community reviews of Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 HERE, some walkthroughs HERE, HERE and HERE and if you want to see some game-play you can HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Conclusion:

Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 is a seven-year-old old hidden object game. It has the usual hidden object puzzles and a selection of mini games. It’s an okay game, good enough to keep me playing for a few hours; however, HOGs are not my favorite type of arcade game, so I do find it difficult to get inspired. If you expect an exceptional HOG like Stray Souls: Dollhouse Story, Eventide: Slavic Fable, Space Legends: At the Edge of the Universe, Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart or Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride (IMHO), then you’ll be disappointed however, if you enjoy playing HOG’s this is worth a download. I won’t give this a score simply because I’m a little biased and find it difficult to be fair minded when it comes to genres I’m not really interested in (except on the rare occasion I do find one that is inspiring.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback about the game; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. To access the comments once the giveaway is over, open the game giveaway to its home page then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open up the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Big Fish Games.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game is blocked by their security (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not) because Themida code has been known to hide malware, so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though they are actually free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. In the almost 11 years theis game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Insider Tales: The Stolen Venus 2 doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns thread for details of other free games and offers HERE