Your grandfather was always a big fan of popular TV gameshow The Hidden Object Show so when he was asked to appear on it as a contestant heYour grandfather was always a big fan of popular TV gameshow The Hidden Object Show so when he was asked to appear on it as a contestant he didn’t think twice about signing up. What he didn’t sign up for was to be held captive by a madman in a mansion! Receiving a message from your grandfather about his imprisonment you race to the mansion only to find not just your grandfather but many other ‘contestants’ locked away in cages. The only way to free all of them is to follow the rules laid out by your host: play the rooms and find the secrets of each room. Only when enough games are played will this evil man allow individuals to go free. Lose and you could also end up as a new decoration in his mansion.
Having played the third game in the Gogii Games series; Millionaire Manor: The Hidden Object Show (2010) there’s that feeling of genius almost being within the players grasp only to be pulled away at the last minute. It’s almost really good but while it does things better than previous games it also makes some fatal mistakes. The third game finally takes its meta-HOG concept and does something with it. Gone is the hapless host and the bargain budget TV locations. Instead we get a mansion with a crazed madman out to cause misery for everybody by capturing people he’s invited under the ruse of it being the actual TV show from the first two games. The stakes are raised in a kind of Saw style story (obviously without the extreme violence). The black comedy is still there with the collection of bewildered contestants ironically driving the host even further into craziness. He sure picked the wrong people to keep around for his amusement but that’s why it’s so amusing.
The whole experience mirrors very closely the TV series. Each room in the mansion must be entered and various types of HOGs must be played. All your old favourites return but there are also a couple of new ones such as Focus where you have to find objects using a magnifying glass while in Elimination you have to do the exact opposite of what the clues tell you. It’s the same gameplay in a different setting. Games are broken up with bonus rounds that allow you to gain extra hints or shards but the game plays pretty similar to the first two. Perhaps that’s the problem: the gameplay feels slightly laboured even if the tension is always high. It’s taken three games to get the unique concept of the series fulfilled but it’s a little too late. The game also has a game breaking bug. After freeing your father your host tells you that you’ll never leave as there are more games to play. The fact is you’re required to get 100% on all the games in Extended Play which is kind of difficult to do when the game only allows you to get 98%! It’s a programming mistake that Gogii never fixed with a patch. Turns out you’re supposed to keep clicking ‘play’ as some of the games are actually hidden which is why you can only get 98%. It’s very poor programming by Gogii and when you do reach total completion you get nothing but a scripting error. You never find out if you escape, you never find out your hosts motives or his name, you never even find out if he gets his comeuppance. Whether it was a final screw you to players by disgruntled employees or complete negligence it’s certainly a bad way to end the series.
Gogii’s third attempt at The Hidden Object Show breathes new life into the concept but a total lack of care towards the final stages of the game along with tiring familiarity of it all means it just misses its mark by so much. Like some TV adaptations the concept is there but the execution falls flat.… Expand
