Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst is the fifth hidden object puzzle game in the MCF series published by Big Fish Games for the PC. The series started in 2005 as a simple hidden object puzzle with a story. You play the role of a detective who’s given a mystery to solve, and you search for clues in several set locations that are oh so cluttered.  Remember those I Spy children’s books from the 90s? That’s exactly what they are!

Ravenhearst was released in December 2006 and it marked the series’ transformation from light-hearted whodunit to sinister ghost hunt. It also introduced  a variety of puzzles to solve outside of the usual search-and-click on hidden objects.  In the game, the player is tapped by “Her Majesty” to investigate a mysterious abandoned manor whose rooms are secured by elaborate puzzle locks.  As you solve the puzzles, you also unlock the mystery of one Emma Ravenhearst, whose diary provides clues to the manor’s secret.  At the conclusion of the game, you find and free Emma’s ghost.. and something else. The nature of this evil spirit was actually revealed at the end of a sequel released in 2007 - Madame Fate.

So in Return to Ravenhearst, you once more don your detective hat and enter Ravenhearst Manor in an effort to find and destroy that malevolent spirit.

The game retains much of its original charm as a casual game. The puzzles are just the right level of difficulty, requiring more thinking than reflex action. The only puzzle I really hated was the Whack-A-Mole one. I do believe it’s easier to hit those stupid moles with a real mallet than with a mouse, especially on a 24-inch wide screen.  I like that they’ve added a “Skip This Puzzle” option though. This minimizes the frustration and offers you a way to get through any puzzle that’s too tricky for you, albeit with a time penalty.

As with its predecessor, the graphics, music and sound effects in Return to Ravenhearst create a macabre  setting that’s guaranteed to keep you  on the edge of your seat.  You might want to consider turning the sound volume down if you scare easily. They have also made one major change to the interface that makes the game a great deal more immersive.  Moving from one area to the next is now accomplished by clicking in the direction you want to go,  adding to the illusion that you are actually moving from garden to manor to the rooms within.

You can download the game from Big Fish Games but we warned: the free download will only let you play the game for 1 hour. After that you will have to buy the full version for $19.99 ($6.99 if you’re a Big Fish Game Club member).

I think it’s worth it.

Having officially clocked 17 hours, 21 minutes and 24 seconds on my main character, not to mention the undocumented time I’ve put in rolling and re-rolling my characters, I think it’s about time I wrote a review on My Sims for the Nintendo DS. Besides, my fan club (which consists of a few of my BFF’s) has been clamoring for a new blog post from me, bashing me for getting too engrossed with the (upcoming) POTBS Vault fansite to take care of my own blog. So here you go.

My Sims is a game that was developed by EA Games for both the Wii and the Nintendo DS, based on Maxis’ The Sims. What sets it apart from the original Sims games is the character design. Instead of the traditional funny-looking-but-endearing simmies, you will find anime-like Chibi characters in My Sims.

In creating your character, you get to specify your gender, choose your skin tone, hairstyle and color, eye shape and color, and starting set of clothes. The DS version starts you off on a boat journey to a place you name. The boat captain then tells you that he hasn’t been there in a while, and seems to be surprised that you’re moving there. At the docks, you are met by a sim with an oversized furry-looking head who runs away as soon as he sees you! As you follow his trail, you soon find out that it’s actually a little boy wearing a costume, in an attempt to help his grandmother (who happens to be the mayor) make the town more attractive to visitors. The mayor graciously welcomes you but warns you that the population is slowly dwindling and try as she may, she can’t seem to make it attractive enough for new residents. It slowly dawns on you that the future of [Name Your Town] is in your hands!

You interact with the characters in the game through emotes that appear as selectable icons at the bottom of your screen. You can talk, listen, encourage, comfort, be angry, or cry, as the situation demands. Choosing the right emote fills up an interaction bar that leads to a successful interaction. But if you pick the wrong one, it might make the NPC mad at you. As you meet and successfully interact with the town folk, you unlock certain events and mini-games. For example, after getting the local tailor out of his depression, and after calming an angry cop, your town gets a new citizen. When you help the florist beautify the locale, tourists start coming.

There are five mini-games in the DS version at which you win medals, plus four side events that help you improve your relationship with the sims involved. The Fishing game is started after you charm the local fisherman into giving you a rod. The kid you meet at the beginning of the game will give you a racket so you can play the Racquetball mini-game. The florist asks you to make leis for her. Much later, you also get to go paragliding, scuba diving, and skydiving. In addition, you will meet a socialite sim who conducts periodic fashion reviews and rates your taste in clothes. You also get to play a couple of card games at the casino.

As you unlock events, your sim gains experience points that add up to earn you a star. Gaining a star opens up a new area in the game, and gives you new sims to interact with. There are five total stars to achieve, but the game doesn’t end after you earn the fifth star. It does open the last inaccessible area and introduces a new character: a pilot who crash landed on the old unused airstrip and is now trying to earn money to buy him some fuel so he can make the flight back home. This in turn opens up the last mini-game, Skydiving.

In addition to the experience stars, you also get a relationship meter with each character in the game. As the character’s story progresses, so does your relationship meter, until it fills up and you get a star for that person. So I suspect, the endgame involves getting all five stars PLUS stars on all your relationship meters.

As far as I can tell, some events can only be unlocked if you do extremely well in a particular mini-game (ie. you win a gold medal in it). My sim has been skydiving till she’s blue in the face but she’s not very good at it so it hasn’t seemed to advance the story as far as the pilot is concerned. I suppose that’s to be expected. You cannot say you’ve beaten the game until you truly master all there is to master in it.

Only time can tell if the game will hold my interest long enough for me to master the skydiving game but My Sims currently holds the longevity record for me as far as DS games are concerned, beating Pokemon Diamond and Puzzle Quest. In fact, those wide-eyed little people are so endearing I think I might steal my daughter’s Wii and start playing THAT version, too!

1. Decide what system you want. There are many many choices out there but I’ll just focus on the top two: the Nintendo DS ($129.99) and Sony PSP ($169.82+). The DS is the most successful handheld console, its most unique feature being the two touch-screens which allows for a more direct interaction in games. The PSP is not far behind though, and appeals more to technophiles because of its non-gaming functions. It allows you to play back music and videos which can be downloaded from a PC, connect to the internet through wifi (it has a 4.3-inch screen), and many other nifty things. The bottom line is, if you are only interested in playing games on your handheld then go for the DS, but if you want a handheld gaming console/PDA, then get the PSP.
2. If you’re going for the DS, you have a choice of three colors: black, white and pink! Then I would recommend getting the Travel Kit, which comes with ear phones, a car charger and a carrying case, among other things.
3. Buying a PSP is a little more complicated because you have many options. The core pack costs $169.82 and contains the barest minimum: the console, battery and an AC adapter. The value pack costs from $209 upwards and includes the core pack PLUS a 32-meg memory stick duo, earphones with remote control, a slip case, a wrist strap, and a sample disc. And then there’s the entertainment pack, priced at $219.82, which includes the core pack PLUS a game called ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin Trails, a UMD movie Lords of Dogtown, and a 1-gig memory stick. I would go for the value pack.
4. For the PSP, you will also need to get a USB Cable so you can connect it to your PC for downloading stuff, unless you’re set up with a wireless network that will let you access your desktop/laptop files directly from your PSP.
5. No matter which system you go for, you will also need to get the following accessories, if they don’t come with the pack:
• a carrying case
• extra batteries (especially for those long plane trips)
• ear phones/head phones

Unfortunately, I am by no means an expert on this since I have neither a PSP nor a DS. But I’m the resident geek among my non-gamer girlfriends so I’m expected to know all these things.

Last weekend I got hooked on this silly game that I discovered by following an ad link from my website. Notice I said “following an ad link” and not “clicking on an ad” - I can’t click on my own ads even though it looks mighty interesting to me. So anyway, the game is called Supple and I don’t even remember what caught my eye on the ad but their homepage had appealing graphics (to me) and it describes the game as “much better than the Sims”. Of course I doubted the veracity of the claim and would never have bought the line but they had a free trial. You can download the game and play it for one hour before you decide whether you want to buy it or not. So download I did. I figured it was a good way to kill time while waiting for my LotRO buddies to show up. Well, I ended up spending $20 and way more than one hour playing it. I suppose considering the amount of money Americans spend on entertainment, that isn’t too much to pay for hours of interactive sitcom.

The download was painless - it was over in maybe 2 minutes (I have a cable connection). Installation was also a breeze. So I start up the game and get a few options on the main menu (New Game, Load Game, Sound, etc). I figure since I only have one hour, I should just plunge into the game so I pick New Game. I get a short blurb that describes the scenario and tells me what my objective is. I am playing as Arin Costello, associate editor at Supple Magazine. My goal is to beat my self-centered but sexy colleague for the promotion to style editor. To do that, I need to impress my boss Margot. Hmmm interesting!

I click on “Play” and it gives me three difficulty levels to choose from: Easy, Medium and Hard. Not bad an attempt at replayability. For now I pick Easy. The scene opens up with Arin and Hugh standing in the office. The game graphics are a little better than the original Sims but nothing compared to Sims 2. Hugh comes over and starts chatting with Arin. Real voices come out of my speakers and I like that. I find out later that the characters only have two or three scripted lines per situation but for now it’s a novel thing! He’s friendly and I get the option to respond in kind, be bitchy to him, or ignore him. No reason to be nasty so I go along. Woot! Arin has a sexy voice too! I’m beginning to get attached to my avatar.

After a while Hugh decides he needs coffee and the game tells me that Arin needs to get rid of her jeans because the boss doesn’t like casual clothes. She can go shopping for clothes but she doesn’t have enough money, so she has to do research to earn money. I click on her computer and she meanders over, sits with a flourish and starts typing away. The race is on for the promotion and I’m hooked!

The game timeline starts on a Monday and ends on a Friday. Whoever gets the most game performance points at the end of the week gets the promotion. At the start, Hugh seemed to get ahead faster than Arin. He also flirted quite heavily with the boss and bought her gifts. And once in a while, he would come over and poke fun at Arin, which deflated her self confidence and made her perform poorly at work. But once I figured out the AI, Arin started to run circles around him and the poor thing didn’t even know it. So of course in the end she got the promotion AND the man. One of these days, I’ll probably try it out on Medium or Hard level, or just play with various situations to see how the characters would react.

What makes the game interesting to me though, more than the fact that it unexpectedly held my interest for more than an hour for such a simple game, is that it’s obviously aimed at female gamers. We don’t see too many of those around. The producer is an outfit called More Than Interactive (MTI) Games and this seems to be their first venture. The game is very similar in concept to the Sims 2 Life Stories, and although the latter is a better game all around, it’s always nice to see a small company come out with a product that has just as much entertainment value.