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8.2 ultra recommended
Here are some of the scariest places I have ever searched for ghosts at night: Prospect Place just outside of Dresden, OH. The Poor House in Greene County, IL. Ohara Junior High School (North Building) in Kumagaya, Saitama. Old Warehouse Restaurant, Roscoe Village, OH. Those are all spooky places, but I never saw a ghost. I heard sounds, but never saw anything and unfortunately never experienced anything that couldn't be attributed to natural causes. People who shout "ghost!" at the slightest sound really irk me. Some "ghost hunters" just can't be trusted. For example, a girl who accompanied me to Prospect Place later told some people that we heard music box music inside one of the rooms. That was a lie. But as a result now there's probably a footnote in a book somewhere about the mansion that mentions the eerie sounds of a ghostly music box.
G.H.O.S.T. Hunters: The Haunting of Majesty Manor, by Aisle 5 Games, gives you a chance to investigate a potentially haunted house. (If you're like me you jumped up from your steak dinner when you heard the name of the game, and downloaded it immediately.) In the game, you take the role of a new employee of G.H.O.S.T Hunters, a large impersonal T.A.P.S.-like paranormal investigations group based out of Illinois. Viola Majesty, of the Majesty Manor in Ohio, is at her wits end - she's hearing strange noises and objects are moving around the estate by themselves and even vanishing. She sends a desperate letter to G.H.O.S.T. Hunters. But G.H.O.S.T. Hunters is only interested in real, verified haunted houses. They don't want to send one of their seasoned investigators all the way to Ohio (that's a ten hour drive!) for what might be a hoax, so they give the case to you. After receiving a form letter from G.H.O.S.T. Hunters' Director of Human Resources and a handheld computer, you're on your way! You have fifteen days to discover who (or what) is haunting Majesty Manor.
Your assignment: look in cluttered rooms for objects that your computer has identified might have some psychic energy residue. Yes, you guessed correctly... G.H.O.S.T. Hunters is yet another hidden object game like Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst or Dream Day Wedding. Each day of your investigation, you are given access to three or four or more cluttered rooms in the manor. You have a target number of objects to find. Gameplay involves scanning the room and clicking on the items as you discover them. When found, they shimmer, disappear, and are removed from your list. In most rooms you have to find eight objects out of your list of ten. You can continue searching for items after your goal is reached for very valuable bonus points.
As in similar games, hidden objects are blended into their surroundings. They're partially obscured, inside paintings, at odd angles, and possibly not quite the size you expect them to be. You may say to yourself, "Holy smokes! That's the biggest novelty joke pencil I've ever seen!" Of course, there are plenty of spiders and fruit. It's impossible to make a hidden object/seek and find game without spiders and fruit. Oddly enough, G.H.O.S.T. Hunters also includes tiny handweights in every room. Aisle 5 Games must be trying to start a trend.
Each day has a time limit. If you haven't identified a suspect before the time on your Spectre-Scan Mate handheld computer reaches zero, then it's game over and you can kiss that comfy office job in Waukegan, Illinois goodbye. If you're reading this review, then I assume like me you're a fan of random clicking. These games weren't made for people like us, I guess, because like other hidden object games, here again we are penalized thirty seconds for frequent random clicking.
What does finding objects have to do with identifying suspects? What does it have to do with determining if the mysterious goings on in Viola's home are a ghost's handiwork, or just a big fat hoax? Those are good questions. Be sure to send them to Aisle 5 Games.
G.H.O.S.T. Hunters isn't as well-plotted as Magic Academy or as well-drawn as Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile... but it certainly excels in resolution. And by that I mean screen resolution - the game is presented in 1024x768 whereas most other hidden object games are 800x600. This means objects are much clearer and you can lean closer to your monitor without feeling your eye blood vessels twist and shout. I'm also happy to report I didn't see any horribly miscolored or misnamed objects. (However once I couldn't find a pot of gold because I thought it was a bowl of popcorn.)
What happens if you fail to find an object? Do you unplug your monitor, weigh it down with sandbags, and dump it into the river? No, of course not. Luckily your handheld Spectre-Scan Mate has an EMF detector built in. You can scan for objects in the room and, like a geiger counter, hear clicking sounds as you near something on your list. (In my as yet unnamed upcoming hidden object masterpiece, a cartoon penguin will shout "Cold! Warmer! Warmer! Hot! Very hot! You're on fire!") You have enough batteries for five hints a day, and if those run out you can find more hidden throughout the manor.
There's not much to the music of G.H.O.S.T. Hunters, just an ambient new wave vibe that occasionally resembles the soundtrack of Lars Von Trier's Kingdom (Riget). That allows the infrequent spooky sound effect (door opening, something moving, etc.) to really stand out. Once when I was playing I thought I heard my closet door open behind me, but it was just the game. Lucky me!
If you like hidden object games, give G.H.O.S.T. Hunters a chance. There are no minigames and not much to the investigation besides lots and lots of cluttered rooms, but it's still a fun time.
G.H.O.S.T. Hunters: The Haunting of Majesty Manor