Secret Files 3 Reviews

The game was far too short, the characters that were unique to the game were poorly developed and the writing was mediocre at best. I am a huge fan of The Secret Files and I love adventure games in general (been playing them for 20 years) but I was very disappointed with this one.

Technically superior from the previous iterations, with a more than decent voice cast this time around, solid riddles and puzzles and a somewhat ridiculous (unfortunately not in a good way) storyline. Recommended with caution.

Secret Files is a strange series. Secret Files 1: Tunguska had a very good story, but awful voice acting and nonexistent logic. Secret Files 2 had a slightly worse story, but slightly better logic and voice acting (though still not good). Now Secret Files 3 has pretty good logic almost all throughout the game and actually enjoyable puzzles, but the story is incredibly short, awfully told and the ending is so quick, you might miss it if you blink. The voice acting has been further improved and could even be called decent now, but the audio balance is kinda wack; Nina speaks so silently sometimes that the music is 5 times louder than her voice, on default settings. Anyway: from a gameplay perspective, there is improvement as the game becomes much smoother as a result of improved puzzles and logic; but from a story perspective, this game is painful, doesn't make any sense and is (luckily?) over far too quickly. My guess is that they extracted some logic from the story and put it into the puzzles; why can't both be good for once? We may never know, but I feel like this series could've been so much more. Not much has changed with Nina and Max either, though there is slightly less forced humour. (Aside from the outtake reel in the end which seems, uh...misplaced?) The overall experience is slightly improved compared to Secret Files 2, but as an adventure game, it still isn't that great and thus I can't really recommend it.

The same overly unrealistic puzzles you know from the first two games, except that these now have ones that will punish you if you misstep and have you repeat the same tedious stuff just in order to provide filler material and make the game seem longer than it is. Unless you're really prepared to suffer just to play another installment of the series just because you've endured fownsides of the first two, do yourself a favor and use your money to buy a different game instead.

Secret Files 3, the third and final game of the Secret Files series (minus the short Sam Peters game they did) Honestly, this game is ok that's it. The first 2 games in the series are much much better, I would put this as mixed if I could. I can only recommend it as it's the final game of this series but it just doesn't have the same charm as the first two at all. It was sadly done so much worse, and choices matter so you can replay and see different endings. It's a shortish game, can do easily 4 hours or less, but the puzzles aren't the best and majority of them are really simplistic..... Spoiler: [spoiler]This game involves time warping more than it should really, and a couple of them are really annoying. Especially the puzzle where you need to continuously try to follow the man through the paths/alleyways. Then the robot fight......... this didn't need to happen.[/spoiler] I kind of feel like they didn't exactly know how to proceed with the story to they added extra steps to some puzzles, and they added in some random stuff here and there. I think they could've done so much better to send off Nina and Max, but alas this is what we got, BUT it IS better than nothing. So again I can only recommend this so you can see the ending and you get to decide what happens to Nina and Max.

pros + high quality and polished pre rendered graphics. the backgrounds being particularly beautiful and well-designed + a intriguing sci fi story mixed with history + there are many different locations + enjoyable puzzles. they are not too easy or overly complicated. there are also inventory puzzles you can combine some items + enjoyable mini games with two difficulty option + Nina is an likeable protagonist + decent voice acting + good looking character models + fun to watch and well made cinematic cutscenes + there is auto save + when you press to space, hotspots highlighted so no need to pixel hunting + user-friendly point and click interface + good soundtrack + there are 4 endings cons - game shorter than previous two games. it looks like this game made with lower budget than previous games. - convoluted and confusing narrative with too many plots in the past and present - lack of character development and depth for most of cast. second character Max doesn't appear too much in this game. - doesn't have the charm of the first two games. SF 3 is not as funny as its predecessors - there are no Steam achievements - game doesn't drop any cards Overall this is decent game but i enjoyed more from previous two games. i felt like writers tried too hard to create a compelling high tech sci fi story but final product turn out to be convoluted and little bit dull.

This game is a quintessential old-school point-and-click adventure. Although the animation and graphics may seem somewhat dated, it's still enjoyable. It will appeal not only to fans of the series but also to those who enjoy this genre.

I'm a fan of Secret Files, but this game was just a disappointment. The puzzles were a bit more realistic, but the game was ridiculously short and the story was lacking. Not worth the 5€ I spent.

[h1] Still playable but worst of the series (haven't played Sam Peters yet). Recommended for 5 Euro or less [/h1] [b]Pros:[/b] [list] [*][u]Decent voice acting[/u] – third time around they’ve finally managed to get it more or less right. [*]Very nice backgrounds and some interesting camera angles [*]Mostly logical puzzles [*]Good music [/list] [b] Cons:[/b] [list] [*]Character animations for performing actions – or actually lack of it. It’s really big downgrade since previous installments [*]Plot-wise its weakest of the three [*]Very week secondary characters that shows up suddenly and disappear after few moments (without a chance to hold decent conversation) [*]Character models better than in predecessors but still below average [*]Much shorter than the other two (gameplay around 6-7 hours) – not a problem for me but I think it’s worth mentioning [/list]

Secret Files 3 treads on very thin ice. It's short, it's got an overly complicated plot line and just doesn't have the charm of the first two games. Not to mention the ending involved watching a 5 second long cut scene and finding out what happened after the end of the game with some images and text. Then, for no reason other than to add some 'levity' they tagged on a terrible 'outtake' reel. It fell right through the ice and died a death. At the moment, I'm not looking forward to 4/Sam Peters and I'm starting to think Deep Silver are giving up on point-n-click adventures. I'd think it was a damn shame if this game wasn't so half-hearted.