PC User Reviews

How many Hidden Object Games does it take to screw in a lightbulb? I don’t know, I couldn’t find any. Okay, now that anyone with any discernable taste is gone, I’m here to address the rest of you. So there’s this game, it’s called Luxor Adventures. It’s a HOG and a half. What were my first impressions? I don’t know. I beat this game that is way too long, and I still don’t think I got any first impressions. I find some truly unique sensations playing old or unknown games. Story, huh? Well, lemme tell you something. This game is a ghost story. Not in the sense that this game involves any level of haunting or interaction with the undead, no. I mean that, like a ghost story, you’re down on your luck; you’re poor and bored. You find an ad for this game somewhere. It’s a little off, but it’s going cheap and you could use the break. You get the last copy of this game and load it up. At first everything seems normal; ambiguous cartoon cutscenes, usual HOG puzzles, the whole affair. But one day you realize you’ve misplaced the story somewhere. Ironically, you can’t find it no matter how hard you look. Then it just turns up. Did you leave that there? Did you even touch it? *Shrugs* Oh well, HOGs be weird. But then, the more you play it, the more the story makes itself known. Suddenly, you’re confused and afraid. But what to do? You tell anyone who will listen; friends, family, the local priest. But when they come over and you load up the game, no story happens. You scream and yell: “There is a story I tell you! I saw it with my own eyes!” But everyone just thinks you’re mad. And then… It ends. That was anti-climactic. Ghost story. Moving on. This game overstays its welcome. I’ve had weird uncles, down on their luck, stay at my place that have been less burdensome, and left more appropriately. This game features 10 episodes, except for the fact that there are only 5 episodes, twice. Those 5 episodes were already getting lengthy enough and failing to hold my attention as the ghost story dwindled away. But to do them all again? And twice as long this time? And the ghost pisses off completely, making you question your sanity. Was it there at all? ****. Too long. And not worth it. The second time you do each hidden object scene, you’re asked to find 2 lists of objects, including all the ones that you’ve already found and know the location of. Why? They could have simply not programmed the second half of the game, and it would have been better. The scenes themselves are okay. It suffers from the same resolution stretching as other HOGs by the same publisher, but more workable this time. The art isn’t terrible this time either. 1 or 2 scenes I thought looked really nice, but I’ve always liked the ancient Egyptian aesthetic. And they do it justice in many of these scenes. And there wasn’t any pixel hunting that I recall. So that’s good. They include a variety of other game types to somewhat counteract the long playtime. More than other HOGs include. You have ‘spot the differences’ which was a favourite of mine. It presented a nice break while maintaining the foundational mechanics of a HOG. Similarly, there was ‘find and assemble puzzle pieces;’ starting to get mediocre. There were card games, bejewelled games and mahjong games which were fun, if a little too derivative. And then you have the luxor game itself where you shoot coloured marbles to match and destroy them before they reach the end of their path. These were okay at first, but actually became an annoyance. You see, you are left with too few options when you can only shoot vertically and only move on a horizontal axis, but the paths towards the end start favouring vertical straights. You either waste time waiting for the marbles to come back around, or keep firing off balls until you get the colour of the marble at the back of the train. The overreliance on this tactic to increase difficulty towards the end ruined the simple fun the game started off as. In the main HOG gameplay, they tried to add variety by including crossword-style clues for objects, and an object you have to place on another related object. The keyword here being ‘tried’ because it don’t add nothing to the experience in truth. But I appreciate the effort. At least you can’t say that Luxor Adventures is going limp fish on you. If you’d ever actually say that… There’s not too much more to say about this game. There are no glaring flaws, but it’s far from perfect. They add a great level of variety to the gameplay, but it’s mostly cheap and drags out the experience way too long. The story's dumb, but it has enough self-awareness to make itself scarce before you’ve had a chance to get to know it well enough. If you like Hidden Object games play half of it, and then donate the other half to a kid in Africa… I don’t know. Luxor is a city in Egypt, by the way. I was not aware of that. I was confused.