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6.2 sorta fun
Who wouldn't want to be a big budget Hollywood movie set decorator? Buying lighting fixtures, lamps, paintings, wallpaper, sea turtles, monkey skeletons, octopuses, etc... why it's any movie fan's dream come true. In this new hidden object game it seems that a big Hollywood studio has a sudden shortage of set decorators (and prop masters) and you just happen to be walking past the studio gates when BAM! you're drive-by hired by a cigar-chomping Poser studio head!
HdO Adventure: Hollywood, Director's Cut, from Boonty Games, is the newest in a long line of hidden object games. As you know (unless you've been trapped in a mine shaft for three years) these are games where you search a scene for individual objects on a list given to you. Usually the scenes are jam-packed full of junk and bric-à-brac and items of all sort. Therein lies the challenge. Hidden object games are kind of like a cross between Where's Waldo and a treasure hunt. Only on your computer. HdO Adventure will have you searching for items on various genres of movie sets, and then answering questions about the movie being made afterwards.
(I'm not sure what HdO is supposed to stand for. Perhaps it's a cool new shorthand form of writing "hidden object game." You could text your bff "u playing hdo 2nite" and your friend would text back "def".)
Your day starts with a map of Hollywood and a choice of film sets to visit. You don't actually get any information about the sets in advance, but you can choose which one to visit first. That's like taking one step toward interactivity, and then taking another step back. But when it's all over you'll arrive at the movie set and be put straight to work. Usually you need to clean up the scene first. For example, maybe the previous take on the western set involved lots of whooping and running around and firing arrows, like that funny fox-hunting scene in R.A. Lafferty's Okla Hannali. Resulting in arrows sticking out of every possible cactus and storefront and stagecoach. You'll need to collect them all before the production can do a second take. Or maybe it's fake cobwebs that need to be cleared away. Or bugs!
Once the set is clean it's time to pick up your cheater glasses (I always wear cheater glasses when playing hidden object games) and start looking for objects. The studio head, producer, or some unspecified person has given you a task to complete. The first task I was charged with was finding the lead actor's glasses. (See what I mean about handling props as well as set dressing?) Thanks to my own cheater glasses I saw the glasses onset immediately, but before I could grab them I was presented with a list of other things to find. Swords, cauldrons, brooms, etc. Only once I had found all of those was I able to click on the glasses. Hey, guess what? I just found Daniel Radcliffe's glasses!
Once you've found all the hidden objects and your task is complete, the movie can be finished! Then, just to test that you weren't sleeping on the job, the studio head gives you a multiple choice quiz about the movie you just helped "make." Or about the genre of movie in general. Some of these questions are, frankly, ridiculous. Early in the game I was asked what the title of the pirate movie I had just hunted through was. How was I supposed to know it was The Pirates of the Carribean and not Treasure Island? Fume! Stew!
I know you want to ask about random clicking, a method which most hidden object gamers embrace - myself included. Sadly, HdO Adventure does penalize you for randomly clicking about in hopes of accidentally stumbling on an object from your list. On a bright note, the penalty is only for about two seconds and not very intrusive. Kind of like a light slap on the wrist as opposed to a crunching punch in the jaw. I can't really complain, because the hint system is very friendly as well - with only scant seconds passing between hints before your green hint panic button is recharged.
One neat feature is a zoom button that lets you zoom slightly into any scene. The graphics are at a crisp 1024x768, and the zoom doesn't make them any clearer - just resizes them - but despite the inherit blurriness in resizing upwards this control can help you spot some of the more fiendishly hidden items. Or those that don't quite match the names on your list. (And yes, there are more than a few in that category.) In general there's not much to complain about in the hidden object scenes themselves... it's just that the rest of the game is bland and unengaging and workmanlike. It's like a designer was paid to come up with twenty or so movie set hidden object scenes, and then they were shoved into game form with no story or nifty menus or cool front ends.
Oh, and HdO Adventure recommends playing with your monitor or screen's brightness setting at maximum level. Just for fun I opened up my ATI graphics card screen settings and changed it to the highest level possible. Now I have a suntan!
Download HdO Adventure: Hollywood