February 9, 2008

Great Secrets: Da Vinci - new hidden object game

I’m not getting any housework or business done today. I took a thirty-minute break after reviewing Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia so I could get out of my pajamas and eat a sandwich, then opened up this new game and started playing again.

Today’s new release from Big Fish Games is Great Secrets: Da Vinci, with a storyline based on Da Vinci’s search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Fictional journal entries follow his progress and carry us from scene to scene. I’m not intimately familiar with Leonardo Da Vinci’s biography, but the story features well-known events in his life, so it seems to be at least somewhat fact-based.

The first thing you’ll notice about the game is that the artists have done a breathtakingly brilliant job. All of the scenes are appropriate to DaVinci’s era and most of the hidden objects are too. There were a couple of itmes that I thought might be out of place but nothing as blatently anachronistic as a cell phone or a microwave oven. Some of Da Vinci’s art is featured as an added treat.

Aspect of this game that didn’t thrill me: Great Secrets: Da Vinci has more minigames than any of the hidden object games I’ve played before. I guess I’m a purist when it comes to the genre - I want all hidden object searches, or at least mostly hidden object searches. There’s not much challenge at all to reassembling a painting or flipping over tarot cards to find matches, so thery’re just interruptions to the good stuff.

Each scene in the game is used for several types of searches. I could live with that if the pure hidden object search was always done first, but it’s not. Sometimes a side-by-side “spot the differences” games is presented first, or a “find all of the … feathers or apples or birds.” The scene above requires the player to find all of the jugs.

By the time you’re presented with a list of hidden objects to find you already know that the lion head is serving as a newel post and the spear on the banister is practically stabbing him. Many of the objects are a challenge to find, but the fun gets sucked right out of the game when you already know the answers.

I like the game. I don’t like it enough to buy the full version. Each of us has their own preferences, though, so it could be one that you’ll want to own. I’m pretty sure all games sell for $19.99 at Big Fish Games but you can get them for as low as $6.99 if you’re a member of their Game Club, so look into that if you’re building a collection.

You can see all of my hidden object game reviews in the Games Category for this blog. At least one more new hidden object game has been released this weekend, so look for another review either later today or sometime tomorrow. I’ve got to take care of some business clients and get the dishes washed sometime, but maybe I’ll play the new game first!

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