Find The Things in the Thing
There were two great mysteries in my life as a child: what jerk of a mother allowed their off spring to circle all of the items in the image-find in Highlights in the doctor’s office, and why wasn’t that magazine offered to normal people who weren’t under an oath more awesome and legally binding than the Green Lanterns. At some point during my search for answers the image-find section seemed to have found a life of its own, because I guess saying “I have lost my shoe in this room full of fish,” and then gauging other person’s response is no longer how you decide if someone is sane enough to stand trial.
The game is held together, loosely, by a series of in game dialogs that are supposed to explain why I am trying to find one non-descript purse in an apartment just full of purse like objects. These rooms, of course, come with a list of objects that you are supposed to be looking for—while ignoring the more troubling signs of both neglect and possible mental health issues of whatever environment that they are in (who even uses CDs anymore and why is every TV just left on “static” by default). The game calmly asks me to get the character ready for her investigation while asking for things like a laptop and then a towel – I don’t know many people that need a towel when they are about to go gallivanting around the world chasing international museum thieves but I am pretty sure the list was written by Douglas Adams.
It isn’t that everything in the game is bad, it was interesting to see load times in a downloadable game with simple graphics and almost no sound, and the way that the main character constantly looks surprised by everything at any given moment in the game is—not charming—depressingly amusing. There is hope, though, as a direct story based sequel to this game has been released to the same e-shop—possibly of hopes of fixing all of the short falls of this title.