Mystery Stories Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 17th July 2009

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This game is a mystery!

Mystery Stories Details:

	Puzzle
	Nintendo DS
	cerasus.media
	Avanquest

Out Now

Puzzle games have proved to be very popular on the Nintendo DS! Available in many different forms, some have the player undertaking complex tasks, whilst others have you simply scouring the screen for hidden objects. Mystery Stories is one such hidden object game, but despite falling into the popular puzzle genre, it's hard to see this game achieving any success.

The premise of Mystery Stories is simple, you are given a list of objects to find on the touch screen and you must find them within a time limit, to complete the level. Simple, yes? Unfortunately not, with murky graphics and indistinguishable objects to mare your progress, it becomes frustrating and I often resorted to tapping randomly on the screen at everything, this does not go unpunished though, as you will be docked time if you are found to be playing in this manner!

Connected to the matter above is the fact that if you happen to find and identify an item you are looking for, it can occasionally take a few stabs with the stylus to select the object before it is removed from the list. As you can imagine, it means that you’re not sure if it’s the right object you’re looking for, and the game is just being pedantic with your pointing, which can lead to you being penalised some time.

The time penalty should not be a huge hindrance as the majority of the levels are fairly straightforward, you also have two types of help available to you. One stops the clock allowing you more time to search for the remaining items, the other instantly points out an object you require on screen. More of these hints are collected by finding the hidden sun object in each level usually this is one of more easily recognisable objects.

To spice things up a bit, you aren’t always given a list of objects, it maybe a picture of the object or a sound effect, sometimes it will give you one object to find but only a minute to find it in. This did not make me enjoy the game anymore, but I suppose it shows that the developers did try to vary it a bit. The variety continues with some different challenges that involve putting back together a bank statement, wow! Or solving a very easy puzzle requiring you to slide objects about on-screen to move it from the bottom to the top. Compared to Professor Layton’s brain taxing problems, these are pathetic and dull.

Annoyingly you will find yourself revisiting the same levels you have done previously, and they’re fairly predictable, there’s a beach, a hotel room, a jungle scene, a museum, other rooms and so on. The repetition theme continues with the constant reuse of objects to find, there always seems to be a trumpet in every level, why do I need to find a trumpet? How on earth is that going to help me?

The story is weak at the best of times and gives you no encouragement to delve deeper into the game. You take on the role of a journalist on holiday that discovers a Mayan artefact which you decide to take to an expert, who promptly vanishes, there’s also some sort of love interest with some diver called Diego. The whole thing is badly presented in still frames of the characters and uninspired text dialogue that could have been written by a 10 year old. The whole thing is disdainfully terrible and gives the game no drive and makes the whole thing a rather unpleasant gaming experience.

Graphically, as I mentioned before it’s terribly murky and unclear with the scene usually cluttered and the objects hard to differentiate from the background scenery. Poor graphics can sometimes be acceptable in games with good gameplay, but here the quality of the gameplay is linked to the quality of the graphics. A poor showing for what has been proven to be a powerful handheld console.

The music is unimpressive and dull, it constantly loops in the background and you’d be better off turning the sound off. There are no sound effects really to speak of and definitely nothing note-worthy for this section of the review!

Mystery Stories could be challenging for the Most Mislabelled Game Title Award this year, as I believe there is no real mystery to the game nor is there much in the way of a story. It could also be in the running for several other awards, possibly Most Fuzzy Graphics which is a huge problem in a game where you are trying to find things on screen. Most of the levels have at least 20 items to locate so it may keep those who can stick with it, some long term use but the simplistic repetitive gameplay and naff story makes this one to avoid and one that is hard to recommend at all.