..................................Moderator comment.....................................

Check out the last section for a link to details of 'Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China' which is free via uPlay until Feb 5th, plus two other games 'A Trip to Yugoslavia (Directors cut)' via Indie Gala and 'Kholat' via Steam

Mind's Eye Secrets Of The Forgotten

In Brief

A hidden object game

Installation Issues:

Mind's Eye Secrets Of The Forgotten downloads to a 177 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is 187 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Mind's Eye - Secrets Of The Forgotten

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game; the name of which may vary each week can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation. There are details in the read me about this issue.

Introduction:

Follow Gabrielle, an enterprising journalist who stumbles on the story of her lifetime, when she smells murderous intent behind what everyone assumes was a suicide. As Gabrielle delves deeper into the mystery, participating in scientific experiments that allow her to enter the minds of other people to search for clues, she will uncover a shocking secret about her past. Mind's Eye: Secrets of the Forgotten offers an unforgettable journey into the subconscious!

Reference accessed HERE. 3rd Feb 2019

The Game:

Playing Mind’s Eye: Secrets of the Forgotten is a bizarre experience. I wanted to like it, I really did, and for the first hour I thought I would. It starts strong, with a grisly murder and the promise of a story that’s actually going places, but after awhile it starts to spin out of control and eventually stops making any sort of sense whatsoever. In the end, all that early potential goes nowhere at all and the game, while decent, never manages to be noteworthy for anything except what might have been.

The game opens with the mayor of the city of Vernida calling it quits on another day at the office, ready to head home for a night out with his wife. But in a surprise twist, instead of leaving his top-floor office by way of an elevator or the stairs, he takes a swan dive out a window. Suicide! Or was it? As Gabrielle, intrepid reporter for the Weekly Seventh newspaper, it’s your job to uncover the truth: A truth that will lay bare secrets deeper and darker than she could ever imagine.

Sinister strangers, dark secrets, powerful evil and a bold investigator determined to get to the bottom of it all is pretty basic stuff for HOGs these days. Yet Mind’s Eye gives a strong impression that it’s going to offer up more, that this game will actually tell a worthy tale rather than just hacking up an excuse to string a bunch of puzzles together. Sadly, this is an illusion; there will be a resolution of sorts but no explanation for any of it, which is doubly unfortunate because there’s an awful lot that could use some ‘splainin’.

Since that’s not in the cards, what we’re left with are straightforward object searches and the obligatory puzzles that fall in between. Unlike some new additions to the genre, Mind’s Eye focuses primarily on hidden objects. The levels are clean but unremarkable, and items are generally quite easy to find. A few are rather nondescript and tricky to pick out as a result but on the rare occasion that one proves stubborn, the game’s very generous help system will simply point it out and have you on your way in no time.

Some of the usual HOG interaction is required at a few points throughout the game – find a screwdriver to pry open a cupboard, for instance – but more interesting is the “three-dimensional” level design. Each hidden object level is split into two “layers,” a foreground and a background, which extend left and right beyond the boundaries of the screen and provide a simulated shifting perspective when moved. Some objects in the background are hidden behind the foreground, requiring players to “move around the room” to reveal them, while others will have to be combined before they can be collected, such as a photograph in the foreground that must be overlaid on a picture frame in the background. It’s a gimmick, but a good one, and the more I played, the more I liked it.

The other puzzles are more of a mixed bag. One of the early examples is a code-breaking brainteaser that caught me completely by surprise and I’m almost embarrassed to admit how thrilled I was to see a new kind of puzzle in a HOG. On the downside, it also sharpened the disappointment I felt a short time later when I was smacked in the face with, yet again, the Towers of Hanoi. All the between-level puzzles can be skipped but only after a timer, which grows longer with each passing puzzles, finishes counting down.

The game’s cut scenes are also unusual, to say the least. For the most part, they feature simple, hand-drawn graphics that look like something out of a Hanna Barbera cartoon, but every now and then other elements done in completely different visual styles are tossed into the mix too, and the effect can be a bit jarring. The scenes themselves unfold very slowly and while they can be skipped, doing so bypasses what little connective tissue there is holding the story together. Fortunately, in one sense at least, the very short length of the game means that most players will be able to afford to waste a few extra minutes watching the interludes and trying to make some more sense out of what’s going on.

And that, now that we’ve got to it, is the straw that broke the camel’s back: Mind’s Eye is shockingly short. I was able to finish it in a little less than two hours of not particularly hard-driving game play. Mind’s Eye boasts 20 locations and ten mini-games, but since it only takes a few minutes to run through each, it adds up to… well, not a lot. An aimless plot and run-of-the-mill visuals can be forgiven when a game compensates with hours upon hours of hidden object searches, but when it can be put away in less time than it takes to watch two episodes of “Castle,” such shortcomings are much harder to excuse.

That, ultimately, is the bottom line: There are simply too many shortcomings to overlook. The game play shows flashes of potential and daring but then slips back into the tired old HOG conventions while the story, which begins with so much promise, ends in a disconnected flurry of near-randomness. There are no extras to keep players coming back, like high scores, bonuses or achievements, and object searches are exactly the same every time through, so replay value is effectively zero. With so many better choices available, Mind’s Eye: Secrets of the Forgotten is just too forgettable to bother with.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Andy Chalk on Apr 12, 2010. Re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 3rd Feb 2019

Conclusion:

Mind's Eye Secrets Of The Forgotten is a reasonable hidden object game with various puzzles thrown in. It's not the best HOG I've played by any means, but I did enjoy playing it despite developing a headache from the prolonged searching for objects. I liked the perspective aspect of each hidden object, where some objects were hidden from view if you were looking at the scene from certain positions. I prefer pure hidden object games like the old I Spy games, that had plenty of hidden object scenes, with little else. I find the constant interruptions by story boards a little distracting, but the ones for this game weren't too bad, plus the large number of hidden object scenes negated this for me. Most of the puzzles were easy to solve, though I wouldn't have called the monitor display or the fuse box power output mini games, puzzles as they relied more on trial and error than pure puzzle solving; however, if you did have difficulty with any of the mini games you could just skip them. Despite the frequent story-boarding, this was a pleasure to play as there were lots of hidden object scenes to tackle. It's almost a decade old now, so the less than sharp visuals can be forgiven. You can still find most objects easily enough. I used the hint button several times on my play through, partly due to differences in semantics. The game also has some rather surreal moments for example when you entered the dolls room and found several dolls, some of which were headless, hanging in various positions. One of your tasks, once you've found the missing heads is to place them on the correct bodies. Overall If you are into pure HOG's, this is worth downloading despite the frequent story board interruptions.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Mind's Eye Secrets Of The Forgotten to 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 are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally 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. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this 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

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Mind's Eye Secrets Of The Forgotten 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 threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).

You can get 'Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China' free via uPlay until Tuesday 5th Feb morning 7am UK time HERE. You do need a free uPlay account and the uPlay client. Plus there are two other games free; 'Kholat' via Steam HERE and 'A Trip to Yugoslavia (Directors cut)' via the Indie Gala bundle site HERE; all three links take you to the giveaway forums where you'll find a brief description, video and images plus a link to the download site for of each game.

<