Review: Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir (DS)

Fri, Oct 10, 2008

The developer behind Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir is Big Fish Games, a company that makes no secret of its specialty. Visiting the Big Fish website, one will see "Hidden Object" as the top genre of their catalog, a link to "10 New Hidden Object Games!" and a handful of editor's picks, half of which are -- you guessed it -- hidden object games. Mystery Case Files is one of Big Fish's more prominent and successful hidden object series, and MillionHeir is its first entry on the Nintendo DS -- a system which would seem perfect for the genre. Published by Nintendo under the Touch Generations label, MillionHeir is a game that gets a lot of things right: The interface is excellent, the DS' features are put to good use, the graphics are just right for the game type, and the premise and humor help provide the game with broader appeal. That being said, you had better really, really like hidden object games if you intend to play MillionHeir, which utterly wrings the gameplay dry and runs it into the ground long after it stops being novel.

Following the usual Mystery Case Files M.O., MillionHeir tasks the player with conducting a criminal investigation, by way of searching for clues. The game has some genuinely humorous moments, though the premise is vestigial; the objects a player must find in a given scene will only rarely have anything to do with the crime at hand. In MillionHeir, the famed and wealthy collector, Phil T. Rich has gone missing, and it falls to the player to locate the heir to his fortune. Thankfully, assisting the player is a highly advanced portable crime computer, which can tell you the precise relationship between Phil and a suspect once you have found, for example, a helmet, two pencils, the letter "A," a garden gnome, a traffic cone, and an invisible dragon. Each level of MillionHeir proceeds thusly -- the player will visit one or more 2D scenes, including a kitchen, an aquarium, a mine, and other exotic locales. Each is kept in extremely messy condition by its inhabitants, filled with massive collections of both appropriate and out-of-place objects (who leaves a bicycle on the roof and a whole fish under the bed?), several of which will be randomly assigned to the player for location. Once the player has found the requisite list of knick-knacks, the crime computer will deduce the next part of the plot. These breaks are usually accompanied by an extra mini-game to keep things fresh -- a jigsaw puzzle or a sliding picture, among others.

The hidden object portion of the game, being Big Fish's bread and butter, is handled extremely well. On the top screen, players will have an overall view of their current location, along with basic HUD elements like the current list of objects and the time remaining to find them; these may also be hidden if you wish to get a better view of the overall picture. On the touch screen, the player will see a magnified portion of the scene, indicated by a small border on the top screen, where they may hunt for the objects. Navigating the scene is a very user-friendly affair: Dragging the stylus will scroll the magnification area in the desired direction, and a quick tap will attempt to pick up a hidden object. Successfully tapping one of the desired treasures will remove it from the scene and cross it off the list, but a player isn't intended to just start tapping at random in hopes of stumbling across an object -- every five taps without locating an object will cost the player 15 seconds from the timer.

The objects themselves cover a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and ease of location. Some objects will be sitting in plain sight in completely logical spots, while others will be cleverly disguised within the scenery, utilizing camoflage and taking unexpected forms. When a player is asked to locate a cat, they won't know whether they ought to expect an actual cat, hiding under the table, or a white cat-shaped cloud in the sky, a cat-shaped stain on a wooden post, or a sphinx statue behind glass. Keeping the objects' forms varied can certainly keep players on their toes -- one may become acclimatized to hunting for tiny details in the background and entirely miss the obvious alternative in plain view.

Finally, adding one more element to the hunting variety, the player gradually accumulates a handful of extra tools to assist their searches. These include things like a flashlight to search entirely dark scenes, an x-ray device to locate otherwise invisible objects (e.g. a key hidden inside an urn), and others. Every so often, there will also be objects which require a bit of interaction to collect, requiring the player to make specific stylus moves before they can be crossed off the list. The game, thankfully, does not make you guess at these extras; any object which cannot be located without a tool will be indicated as such on the list, and all interactive objects will have an obvious hint attached as well (e.g. "polish the armor" means it needs to be rubbed with the stylus, "pop the balloon" means it should be poked instead of... well, poked).

In all, MillionHeir provides a rather excellent little hidden object game, tied together with a family-friendly look and feel. Unfortunately, the gameplay simply cannot sustain itself for as long as the game attempts to make it. While the first couple of hours of MillionHeir are actually fairly enjoyable, the gameplay is designed for a casual experience, and MillionHeir is trying to conduct itself as something more. In the initial stages of the game, the player will be given an objective along the lines of "10 objects/15 minutes/5 hints." From there, it will grow, assigning more objects and a greater timer, until the final stages start containing objectives like "30 objects/40 minutes/5 hints." The hints are always 5, mind you, unless you play at the lower difficulty level, which also removes the timer. A quick burst of play, the kind provided by the early stages, lends itself well to the casual nature of the gameplay, but only a major hidden object devotee is going to still find the task engaging when the scale grows too high. Eventually, what started out as an amusing little hunt will start giving way to eyestrain and wandering attention. The latter is especially true when one comes to realize that the timer is practically pointless. I don't have the best visual acuity in the world; I frequently fail to find my own keys when they are left in the same location every morning, yet I was averaging 5-10 minutes on levels which provided me with a 35-minute timer. As such, when I found myself up against a particularly hard-to-find object, I was able to defy the game's "rules" and poke around at random until I found it -- a 15-second penalty is meaningless when you have half an hour to spare.

The game doesn't ask you to find 30 objects all in the same scene; they will be broken up among 4-5 different interchangeable areas. The downside of this, however, is that there are only so many scenes in the game -- by the time you're visiting 4-5 locations per level, you're going to be seeing the same spots over and over again. This, in turn, inevitably reveals the other flaw of the overextended gameplay: There simply aren't enough objects to let the game last that long. Each scene is meticulously and cleverly composed, it's true, with each area containing dozens upon dozens of objects. However, over the course of the game, you will visit each area over and over again, and while your list of must-find objects is randomly generated, the scene is not. Eventually, your list will start to contain objects you've found before, and if your memory is any good, you'll already know where they are, thus defeating the purpose of the core gameplay. Towards the end of the game, you may well have just found the same object in the previous level. MillionHeir has clearly run its course at this point, yet the game insists on continuing.

Other minor complaints are negligible: The interstitial mini-games are a nice way to break up the levels but their interface needs work (who does a jigsaw puzzle where selecting a second piece removes the first piece from the board?!). A couple of minor naming issues can lead to momentary frustration (does a sand dollar count as a "shell?" Maybe it's just me). And, the mini-game which composes MillionHeir's endgame is entirely forgettable, as is the unlockable content.

Should you buy MillionHeir? Probably not. The game is only $19.99, which is good -- anything more than that would certainly be criminal, for a game with such singularly casual content. But, even the most casual adult gamer will start to feel the game wearing thin after a few hours of play. On the other hand, MillionHeir certainly has enough going for it to keep the kids occupied for a short road trip or plane ride. If that's worth $20 to you (and it certainly is, for some folks), then by all means. You'll be getting a high-quality game, albeit one you'll need to replace for the next big trip.

Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir is available now for the Nintendo DS, and is rated "E" for Everyone.