Hidden Expedition: The Uncharted Islands (Collector's Edition)

The Good
I played the Focus Multimedia CD release of the Big Fish game, and I played in Casual Mode.

This is a hidden object game and hidden object games tend to be pretty standard, a story that requires you to move from one place to another place where you find hidden stuff, collect an article and repeat and repeat and repeat. Yes this game had hidden object scenes, which were very well done, but it also had a variety of puzzles, some that I'd not seen before. One kind of puzzle that was new to me was the the 'find the pair' puzzle. This uses the same kind of congested screen that a hidden object uses and in these puzzles I had to find over twenty pairs of objects. Now what constitutes a pair gives the puzzle designer lots of scope to be devious, it could be as simple as two shoes (I could get those) or as tenuous as a wig and a photo of a bald man (I had to use the hint function for that).

There is a good variety of puzzles in this game, there's sliding block puzzles, a jigsaw puzzle, combination locks, playing with chickens, maze, logic puzzles, memory tests, and others. Several of the hidden object puzzles weren't straightforward, sometimes objects were hidden behind others while other puzzles required lateral thinking and/or the use of items from the inventory in order to solve them.

In Casual Mode the game does not penalise you for clicking random objects or for clicking on non-game objects, which is nice. All puzzles except the hidden object/pair matching ones were timed and had a countdown timer bar; when the time was up there was an option to skip the puzzle.

I've played some games where the colour palette was murky and that made the game hard to play. Not so here 'coz the artwork is very good and clear.

The strategy guide is also well laid out and shows the solutions very well.

The Bad
There were a couple of puzzles that I just didn't understand, probably my error 'coz I have not been playing games like this for four or five months now, the strategy guide helped me a lot and I would have struggled in the standard version.

Some of the hidden object/pair matching puzzles use very small objects, there was one where the object I needed was a nail and I clicked and clicked on it before realising that only the head of the nail was a clickable hotspot.

The Bottom Line
The reason I'd recommend this game are its puzzles. The storyline of both the main game and the bonus chapter aren't much really but they serve their purpose.

If you like the standard hidden object game where all puzzles are the same type then this game probably isn't for you. However if you like a mixture of puzzles and don't mind hidden object puzzles being dominant and sometimes a bit devious then this could be just the ticket.

Once played I do not think this game has anything to offer in terms of replay value.