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8.5 ultra recommended
Well, I spent this Christmas just like I did last Christmas: sliding around on a waxed wooden floor in my socks! I also upgraded Casual Explosion from Wordpress 2.1 to Wordpress 2.9, and let me tell you: that was no walk in the park. Hopefully, few of our gee whiz features have broken but it wouldn't surprise me if some odd problems pop up in the next few days.
Speaking of high school mysteries, I couldn't resist playing through the latest Natalie Brooks adventure. Cute, dashing supersleuth Natalie Brooks is resting at her grandmother's house when she receives a strange letter from one of her old high school classmates, Chad Robertson. Chad's in trouble and asks Natalie to meet him at his art gallery as soon as possible. It seems Natalie and Chad's almer mater used to house a fiendish gang of criminals, and the principal's daughter plans to frame Chad for the murder of her unsuspecting, fabulously wealthy new husband! Can Natalie figure out what's going on in time to save Chad, his girlfriend Kitty, and the day?
Natalie Brooks: Mystery at Hillcrest High, from Alawar Friday's Games, is a full-featured hidden object adventure game. In fact, gameplay is much more adventure game styled than in previous games of the series. You spend so much time trying to solve inventory and item manipulation puzzles that it takes a suddenly appearing hidden object scene to remind you that yes, technically, this is a hidden object game.
Each of the game's ten chapters takes place in a location made up of a handful of rooms. Mousing over the background reveals tooltips describing objects, exits, other characters, etc. The mouse pointer may change to a magnifying glass to indicate that an object can be examined further, a set of gears to announce that an object can be handled physically, or a doorway to point out an exit Natalie can access. Clicking on useful objects adds them to Natalie's inventory.
To solve most puzzles, click on an object from your inventory and then where onscreen you'd like to use it. Thus you can unlock doors with keys, pop balloons with darts, remove bolts with wrenches, and all the other staples of adventure gaming. Natalie is nothing but unstoppable in her quest to repair every gadget she comes across in her investigations, somehow knowing that toy helicopters and broken piggybank clocks will be useful in her near future. Many puzzles are downright silly and tenuous in their grasp on logic... but Natalie lives in a cartoon world and laughs in the face of explosions, so it's all in good fun.
One puzzle in particular didn't make any sense to me... a password to a window washer's laptop is a sequence of numbers read in the reflection of a bank's rooftop sign. I think the letters reflected are the first four in ALAWAR, reversed as WALA (with a backwards L) ... which Natalie somehow sees as "4142." I don't get it.
At the bottom right of the screen are Natalie's goals, so you usually know what you're supposed to be trying to accomplish. Hint: when in doubt, click on everything. Sometimes the smallest little room furnishing in the unlikeliest of places is a clue.
Hidden object scenes pop up occasionally and are fairly standard for the genre. In a cluttered room (or hilariously stuffed-full purse) you'll be asked to find ten objects, one or more which will be added to your inventory for later use. I'm very pleased to say that there is no penalty for random clicking! Hints are quite plentiful if you can't find an object, and the hint button (which does double duty also giving out clues for the game's many item manipulation puzzles) recharges decidedly quickly.
Every chapter contains a few minigames or logic puzzles. For example, you may have to steer a boat toward a rendezvous, use a spider to catch some maggots (seriously!), connect some wires, and of course enter in all sorts of secret codes in all manner of strange locks. These are all skippable after a few seconds of effort, if you're not in the mood, or like me are afraid of maggots.
Natalie's friends and enemies are portrayed onscreen as 3D characters that fidget back and forth within the current background. They are not run-of-the-mill posers, but custom 3D models. If you play a lot of casual games like I do, you know just how much original content is appreciated! The story takes place in conversations between characters, Natalie's journal entries, her own asides, and some well put together animated cutscenes. There are no voiceovers in Mystery at Hillcrest High, but the game hardly lacks from their absence.
The graphics pop off the screen and most rooms are smooth and have a nice, curvy, rounded comic book appeal to their design. Some are better than others, however; Natalie Brooks: Mystery at Hillcrest High is a bit inconsistent, but never so much as to appear amateurish. The game is quite lengthy, though perhaps not strong on replay value. I really enjoyed Konstantin Yelgazin's background score and only wish I could get it into iTunes.
Download Natalie Brooks: Mystery at Hillcrest High