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Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts

Score: 78%
ESRB: Not Rated
Publisher: Freezetag Games
Developer: Freezetag Games
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Puzzle/ Adventure/ Edutainment

Graphics & Sound:

While the last game I reviewed in this line explored the many theories of Amelia Earhart's disappearance, this one, Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts, takes a look at the different societies that had unexpected advances in technology and an unexplainable knowledge of the stars. Could it be that each of these societies were visited by aliens and given knowledge of the Universe that we are just now learning today? It's those societies and possibilities that Unsolved Mystery Club is trying to teach gamers about, this time.

Unsolved Mystery Club takes on a fairly standard point-and-click adventure feel. The scenes you are trekking through are static images with a few animated parts here and there to make sure the location has just enough motion to keep things interesting. The locations themselves cover a wide range of locations that will take the player from the Egyptian desert to a South American rain forest and even Antarctica, and for the most part, the artwork, while not photo-realistic, looks really good and clean.

The game's music takes on a few different flavors depending on your current location. One site might use flute instruments heavier than another in order to give a more exotic feel, while a different location might have some heavier drums to give off a more tribal vibe. While not essential to the game, the sound does a lot to pull off its ambiance.


Gameplay:

Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts is an adventure game with a light sprinkling of hidden object screens. While there have a been a lot of games lately that have been putting the two gameplay styles together, most of them lean more towards the hidden object side of things. Here though, Ancient Astronauts is all but pure point-and-click adventure. There are a couple of hidden object screens at each site, but they are few and far between.

Your mission in this Unsolved Mystery Club edition is to find out what happened to five missing club members. Each was investigating ancient societies that many believe were visited by aliens.

As you trace the paths that each person took, you will not only open up long-locked and hidden chambers, but also complete an ancient artifact called the Black Sun. This object is missing twelve jewels, and as you discover what happened to each of the missing researchers, you will find the missing jewels and bring yourself closer to not only where the missing club members went, but also to the truth about the ancient peoples.


Difficulty:

As far as adventure titles go, Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts actually posed a good bit of a challenge. You can start the game on Casual or Expert, and being a long-time adventure gamer, I chose the harder option for my main play-through. The only real difference between them is the quality of the hints it gives you, hints that I found I had to use fairly often.

Besides the occasional hidden object screen, Ancient Astronauts seemed to be split pretty evenly between inventory-based puzzles and logic problems or mini-games, and there was a pretty good split between easy and hard tasks in there as well. Overall, I was pleased with the difficulty of Unsolved Mystery Club, as it had me stumped a few times, but there was enough quicker-solved puzzles thrown in to keep the story moving.


Game Mechanics:

I personally liked the fact that Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts leans more towards the classic adventure game over hidden object puzzles. While I enjoy the hidden object element and I like the fact that they have been coming out more in recent games than in the past, it's also good to see a title that is almost completely adventure every now and then.

That being said, there are a lot of classic puzzles thrown into Ancient Astronauts that most experienced adventure gamers will recognize immediately and be able to work out in no time. Like I said in the difficulty section though, there are a few that will cause even those extremely familiar with the genre to scratch their heads. What results is a good, all-around mix of a game that actually has quite a bit of story to it and thus, a nice length of gameplay time.

What's better is that the game is educational, to boot. While the learning is wrapped in an enjoyable adventure game, it still manages to teach the player a lot about the different cultures and the evidence on hand that shows how advanced they seemed to be. Everything from the alignment of the Great Pyramids of Giza to artwork depicting space ships and the ability some cultures had for tracking stars, even stars we only just discovered, is laid out for the player to consider. If you have a younger gamer who likes adventure titles and has even the slightest interest in this topic, then Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts will do a lot of good and should definitely be checked out.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.0 GHz CPU, 1024 MB RAM, DirectX 8.0, 697 MB Hard Drive space
 

Test System:



Windows 7 Ultimate, Intel i7 X980 3.33GHz, 12 GB RAM, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c

Related Links:



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