Silent Scream II: The Bride

In Brief

A Hidden Object game

Game play Videos:

You can see several walk through videos of game play by Rachel Plays HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE, plus a few others HERE and HERE.

Introduction:

Jessica would never imagine that her big day would turn out to be a nightmare; they had an accident and Jonathan McNealy, her husband, is missing. Things just got more and more bizarre when she encountered a mysterious girl who seemed to be leading her to Jonathan. Jessica had a feeling that the girl was connected to Jonathan. Did she cause the car accident in the first place? Return to the abandoned mansion and search for clues in Silent Scream II : The Bride.

Reference accessed HERE. 4th August 2019

The Game:

A bride’s wedding day should be the happiest day of her life, but when newlyweds Jessica and Jonathan McNealy get into a car crash and land in the middle of a creepy forest, all of that happiness goes right out the window. Jessica’s left alone in the car, guided by a ghostly woman in white that pulls Jessica deeper into the woods and towards the McNealy mansion. With Jessica’s husband nowhere in sight, it will be up to you to help Jessica heal her wounds and track down her missing husband, with plenty of twists and suspense along the way.

Silent Scream II: The Bride is a spiritual successor to the original Silent Scream, and it plays and looks much more like a traditional hidden object / puzzle game. Throughout the game’s three hour length (on the easiest of two difficulty settings), you’ll investigate a large mansion, abandoned farmhouse, church, graveyard and more through a basic game play format.

There are plenty of hidden object scenes to explore as you find items on text-based lists, and some offer further interactivity via bags that must be opened, candles that must be lit, and so on. The game doesn’t contain a great deal of puzzles, which is almost a good thing, as some of its existing puzzles come with too little in the way of instructions and the skip meter charges at a painfully slow rate.

The majority of your time in Silent Scream II will be spent repeating some of these hidden object scenes multiple times and then backtracking through chunks of environments to complete tasks. You’ll encounter only a few other characters along the way, but the voice acting is handled really well, even if most characters are rather static, instead of properly animated.

Unfortunately, Silent Scream II comes with some click recognition issues, especially when it comes to combining some items in your inventory. This combination ability brings extra challenge to the game, as you’ll need to find two separate items in order to complete a single task, but the game often ignores these clicks when you attempt to combine items. Without the proper click response, it’s easy to think that you don’t have the proper items to move on, when in fact it’s just the game having technical issues that’s slowing you down.

Furthermore, the inventory doesn’t stay on the screen at all times, and must be opened by hovering at the bottom of the screen. This sounds fine in theory, but much of the game’s navigation between scenes also requires you to hover and click at the bottom of the screen. Due to this, you can spend a lot of time in the game accidentally opening and closing your inventory when you really just meant to click “back” to another scene.

Silent Scream II‘s story line comes with plenty of suspense, leading up to some pretty huge twists in the finale. The story line itself is easily the best part of the experience, and it’s so good that it’s actually worth dealing with the game’s technical issues and clichéd “spooky” environments and jump scare tactics just to see what happens next. That being said, the story-line comes with an odd ending that actually makes little sense if you take the time to analyze it. In this, the game doesn’t offer the same cookie-cutter ending that you might be expecting, and Maximize Games deserves some credit for avoiding that outcome.

Silent Scream II: The Bride definitely isn’t a perfect experience, but it offers some nicely detailed, cluttered hidden object scenes, good voice acting, and a fairly fast charging hint meter to help you through. There’s plenty of backtracking towards the end of the game and some items may not be used in their expected ways, but the game is never so challenging as to be truly frustrating. As we said before, the story line is definitely worth the price of admission alone, but don’t expect to be thrilled by the game play along the way.

Reference accessed HERE. 4th August 2019

Other Reviews:

You can read a few tips and other reviews of Silent Scream II: The Bride HERE, HERE and another full review HERE.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Silent Scream II: The Bride doesn't interest you, but you still want 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 Delenn still posts frequent updates and most of the links still take you to the latest deals). You can check out Delenns thread HERE for details of other free games and offers. Also check elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page).

Also, check out the free games available via Indie Gala’s Dev’s showcase HERE. The latest additions (since I last updated this list) include Lumber Island - That Special Place (a psychedelic first-person horror adventure), Adventures of Shuggy (2D Action Puzzle Platformer with Single player, local coop and local multiplayer options), Horror Girl, Citadale: The Legends Trilogy (Retro 8 bit style action adventure platformer), Crab Dub (shmup), Malevolence (retro styled first person horror adventure), Dino Run: Marathon of Doom (retro-styled, action-packed prehistoric dinosaur racing game), Space Ship: The Game (classic 2D space shooter), The Maze: Game (classic 2D maze game), Patience, my Patients (8 bit retro platformer), Total Singu (top down shooter). To get any of the above Indie Gala games you require a free indie Gala account and then click on the acquire button. Once that has been accomplished the game will be added to your account and you should be able to download a free standing copy of the game any time for as long as indie Gala operate. Some of the games do contain adult content and are not suitable for young children.

The latest weekly giveaway over at Epic Games includes two games this week; entitled For Honor: Standard Edition (Enter the chaos of war as a bold Knight, a brutal Viking, or a deadly Samurai. Play the thrilling story campaign or fight in brutal PvP modes - single player included) and Alan Wake (A third person atmospheric horror adventure game. - A Dark Presence stalks the small town of Bright Falls, pushing Alan Wake to the brink of sanity in his fight to unravel the mystery and save his love.); these two games would normally cost you almost £38. From August 8th these change over to GNOG a 3D puzzle game set in a tactile world of toys and secrets. which you’ll find HERE. Finally, there are also over 130 free games available via Steam HERE