Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD
Score: 79% ESRB: 9+ Publisher: G5 Entertainment Developer: Cateia Games Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Adventure
Graphics & Sound: Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD starts off with the main character, Detective Bridget "Biggi" Brightstone on vacation somewhere in Europe following the close of a big case. Her boss, Inspector Sam McCloud, calls her up and asks her to check out some strange happenings at a hotel owned by a friend of his. Even though she is on vacation, she agrees as a favor to him. Although the cut scenes are decent looking, there's nothing mind-blowing about them. They get the job done. You will mostly stay in the hotel and its vicinity, although you will travel to a few odd places and meet some interesting folks in your paranormal exploits. Some of the areas seemed a bit sparse, but what's there looks pretty good. It was just missing the little details that could have helped to flesh things out a bit. There are voiceovers in the few cut scenes, but only text in the game as characters interact with one another. One thing that was pretty aggravating and proves that Cateia Games could use a little help with localization is the fact that Biggi refers to her boss as "sire" although the text says sir. Clearly a translation issue. In stark contradiction, the soundtrack is simply fantastic. It will vary between eerie, haunting piano synth and string music to an upbeat violin piece. It's quite good and really sets the mood, depending on what you are doing. There is a peculiar meowing screech that occurs when you solve a puzzle and the Hint button sounds like you are popping the top on a soft drink can. A bit odd, but not horrible.
Gameplay: In Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD, you will make your way throughout a local hotel where some strange happenings have occurred. One of the visitors to the hotel had a valuable necklace stolen from her and then fell into a strange coma. Other patrons are quickly leaving, the owner is upset, and his peculiar wife is AWOL, plus there's a local detective that doesn't appreciate you horning in on his investigation. You'll work your way through the mysterious hotel, exploring nooks and crannies and seeing peculiar things. You'll encounter environmental puzzles, as well as other puzzles simply meant to baffle you or slow you down. You'll also need to pick up random items to help you along the way, although these are pretty few and far between. When you are engaged in conversation with someone, your possible responses will appear at the bottom of the screen and you must select them. At first, I thought it was going to be a conversation tree where you could choose one of several different responses, but that is not really the case. Your responses simply build one on top of the other, such that you can always choose to re-state an earlier response, but you don't really have "choices" per se. You can, however, always end things quickly with a goodbye instead of hearing everything that you could possibly hear. At times, you will go back to your hotel room and click on your laptop to read or send email. You'll also sometimes take pictures of clues and drag the photo to your laptop to attach it and send it to a friend for help. You'll also meet interesting and mysterious people, like King Arthur, Cleopatra and Mark Antony and even Death, who comes to you in the form of a creepy little girl with dead eyes. You butt heads with reincarnated Egyptian mummies, meet members of a secret society known as the Appotekari and try as you might to save the Earth from impending doom.
Difficulty: There are three levels of difficulty in Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD: Casual, Adventure and Challenging. Casual has sparkles on any active areas, has a fast recharge for your Hint or Skip button and an extended Task List found in your log. This means you can look at your log and see the tasks you must complete, but if you need further help, you can click them and a more well-explained task will appear below with further direction. There are sometimes several levels of depth to the extended Task List in case you really have no clue what to do. In the Adventure difficulty level, you no longer have sparkles to guide you as hints, but you still have the fast recharge on your Hint and Skip button and your extended Task List. Challenging difficulty is exactly that – no sparkles, a slow recharge on your Hint and Skip button and just a simple Task List with no clarification. This difficulty level is for adventure experts.
Game Mechanics: In Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD, you'll have some environmental puzzles like retrieving a key from a grate using a piece of copper wire, but I like how they set it up, "Operation" style. If you touch anything but the copper wire to the key, it buzzes and you lose the key and must retry. You'll also have puzzles that require you to overload the equipment in a boiler room to cause a diversion, or to get an elevator working by randomly tapping on buttons. I saw a method to the boiler room puzzle, but the elevator didn't really seem to have a particular sequence. It just seemed very random. Sometimes you'll have items in your inventory that you can use to further your progress or get past a locked door. If you select an item and drag it to the appropriate spot, you will see a green haze indicating that you have chosen the correct item. A red haze indicates you chose poorly. You have the option to turn the "footprints" button on or off. When it is on, you can see the possible paths you can take, but when it is off, you are all on your own… until you turn it back on again. Besides the environmental puzzles, you'll encounter slide puzzles, rotation puzzles, maze puzzles and one where you have to align tiles. Most are pretty easy to figure out and are fun, but one or two are a little more difficult. Overall, I found Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD to be a pretty short game. It was an interesting adventure, but just not as great as some of Cateia's other offerings. I will say that there's a rather repetitive but hilarious scene where an angry mummy b*tch-slaps a character over and over. It's clearly a repeating animation, but funny nonetheless. If you really like adventures, check it out, but it's not must-play material.
-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins
Related Links: Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel HD | iTunes Game Vortex's Coverage of Cateia Games The Official Cateia Games Website
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