Customer Reviews

Department 42: The Mystery of the Nine [Download]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This isn't as visually stunning as, say, the Ravenhurst games but it has an intriguing story line and fun, challenging mini-games.

The gist: you're an agent working for Dept. 42, which investigates paranormal activity. Seven powerful artifacts have been stolen and scattered around the country, and they're wreaking havoc. You must find them, and find the source of their power, to save the world.

You'll travel through various locations -- a werewolf's lair, an Indian reservation and cemetery, a town under the power of a Voodoo sleep spell, among others -- and retrieve the artifacts. In each setting you'll encounter several rooms or settings where you'll hunt for hidden objects, using some of them to solve puzzles in the process. To obtain the paranormal artifact that's harming that location you'll have to solve a harder puzzle, though none are so difficult that you'll be pulling your hair out.

The game has a helpful hint system, although it seems to take quite a bit longer than most for the hint icon to recharge. You aren't penalized for incorrect clicking, per se, but if you randomly click too often the cursor will circle around on the screen for several seconds during which you can do nothing. Since this isn't a timed game that's not a big deal.

As for finding the objects, they aren't terribly difficult... at first. I did notice on the final two levels the locations seemed to be pretty darned tricky and more than once an item looked *nothing* like I thought it would. Again, since there's no time to beat (except on one mini-puzzle that entails getting a car through a maze), that wasn't a big deal.

The length of game play seemed pretty decent, unlike some of the HOGs I've downloaded from Amazon over the past several days. I spent three evenings playing this, but only a couple of hours each night. Considering that I've downloaded other games that were finished in two hours, I was rather satisfied with the length of this one.

To sum up: fun play, not terribly challenging, and long enough to be worth the price.

In Grimstone mansion a fire erupts and nine evil artifacts which had been stored there are missing. Nine evil artifacts loose in the world, creating and spreading evil. You play as Alice Wright, an agent for an organization that investigates the paranormal and your job is to find and quarantine the nine objects which are already causing havoc, as mysterious and wicked events are already occurring. Even if you're a guy you play as Alice as no male agent is offered.

As an HOG Game, Department 42 is quite complicated, requiring many steps as you unravel the mysteries. This game is excellent and the mini game puzzles are far better than average, and some of them are quite hard. You have to be a very precise clicker and you can easily miss something if you don't get your mouse aimed just right. In one location I was trying to unscrew four screws with a knife, a screwdriver not being handy. You have to attack all four screws and they don't "unscrew" so you may think like I did that the knife was not doing the trick and quit before you approach each screw. Precision clicking is required often in the game and the producers' idea of what a butterfly should look like, for instance, may not agree with your conception. At one point you collect a "beaker" which is actually a flask.

The artwork is very good indeed, the scenes clear and colorful. The items you search for in general have nothing to do with the plot such as a strawberry floating in a brook, but items from each hidden object location will go into your inventory for use along the way. You are often obliged to combine items, such as an icepick to break an ice hunk or combining several things to make a brew. You'll often be looking at the objects in your inventory and wondering what to do with them or where to put them.

The music helps to create a creepy atmosphere, and with the fine graphics and interesting story line this game is a winner, especially at $3.49.

After playing at least a dozen of these games, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. You are a secret agent trying to recover several important artifacts dealing with supernatural powers. The hidden object scenes are well done: clear graphics, interesting objects, hidden in a variety of ways. You will have to go back and forth between several scenes in order to complete each of the separate chapters. The puzzles are not your run of the mill, predictable types found in many of these games. I found many of them to be more challenging than others, but still doable. A couple of the puzzles required more luck than skill, which I thought was a little lame. However, because of the originality of the game and the types of puzzles I was able to overlook that. This game did have a couple of major flaws: 1) as others mentioned, the hint recharge takes a LONG time (somewhere around five minutes -- that is just insane) and 2) the dialog at the beginning of the game and each chapter was S L O W. I could not figure out a way to speed it up so I resorted to skipping it. If you could hit the space bar to move to the next bit of dialog quicker, the game would be much less annoying. On a positive note, the game took about 4 hours to complete which seems to be about average for these games. If you need to skip a puzzle in order to move on with the game, you can go back after you complete the game and do any puzzle again from the main menu. This wasn't one of my favorites (try Adventure Chronicles, Dream Chronicles or Treasure Seekers: THe Enchanted Canvases), but if you have played a lot of these games, you should appreciate the differences in this one. I would definitely play another by this company and can see how with a couple of minor changes, this could be a really great game.

If I had to do it over again I would not have purchased it. The story is interesting but I think a lot of the objects were too hard to find due to being small or blending in a bit too well with their surroundings.

I agree with the other reviewer about the recharge time on the hints. It takes way too long for it to recharge. You can go explore another location but the hint won't recharge while you're at the other site. Too many times when I wasn't random clicking (just earnestly trying to find an object) the darn cursor would punish me by swirling all over.

I give it 3 stars for the plot, the presentation, it being untimed, being able to skip the mini-games and the length of the game was good. Also, the mini-games although I didn't understand some of them, were not the usual run of the mill ones found in many other hidden object games.