Hidden Expedition: Dawn of Prosperity Collector's Edition Reviews

[h1]A solid package but search scenes are a mixed bag[/h1] Continuing my little stint chipping away at my backlog, the random difficulty I chose here was casual. It turns out this was a good choice as even though it is a decent game packed with the usual story, bonus story and various extras, it can seem like it is trying too hard to give you every feature and type of search game that was ever invented. I'm pretty sure at least one mini-puzzle has an interruption game... Inception anyone? I'm not going to mention the story, but it's a standard 'go and do this' at a 'site' and 'save the day' plot. This one sees us go to a groovy underground village, that has trees and parks even though its all rocks up above. Amazing how a game can just gloss over the details of 'how' like that. Thankfully there is only one annoying animal in this one, and it isn't a main feature (except for a load screen maybe). The art is pretty good - nice variety of scenes, colours, angles and depth perception mostly ok... but it does have a touch of facepalm too - swinging objects you can click to make them swing a bit more, clock faces you can click on to mess with the time of day, that sort of thing. Even on casual I ended up having to click on the map to see where to go a few times because items either didn't make sense, or I completely missed an item. Yes, you can still completely miss items on casual. I don't know whether to be embarrassed or proud. (Stupid coat hangar) As for additional items to look for, it's an odd one. Globe statuettes are a one-per-screen collectable, but [i]morphing objects[/i] are actually hidden inside specific search screens and are not on area screens. This caught me out to begin with as I didn't start out looking for them that way - also, there are only 10 of them, which gave it away once I got one. There is another collectable as well but I'm not sure about that one. Even with the in-game achievements, I never bothered to restart to get my missing ones. That isn't all that is odd. Search scenes are often mixed up between looking for picture silhouettes, typed out words, similarity pictures (eg a train might be the picture, but it'll be a different type of train in the scene), revealing an item before finding it as well as exposed items, and even morphing items as a scene (unrelated to the morphing item collectable). To top this off, sometimes a scene is FOUR different separate lists, and when you finish off these separate tabs you are rewarded with an item that is used to unlock the other two tabs so you can search for those. I know. It is needlessly complicated. I think if I had have done it on Hard, I might have needed to reinstall Quake or something so I can vent. Even after all that, I still liked it. Maybe the setting helped play into my feeling for this one, or it could be that final battle with a robot in the bonus chapter. Either way it's a firm positive for this one.