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Some Ghosts Need Help
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Described as a Hidden Object Adventure game,Redemption Cemetery: Curse of the Raven is now available as the Collector’s Edition from Focus Multimedia. As well as the main game, this Collector’s Edition contains a bonus adventure, strategy guide, concept art, wallpaper and a screen saver. For some of the extra items, you will need to complete the main game before they become available.
When playing the game you have a choice of Regular or Expert mode. Playing Regular mode gives you the benefit of various active zones being highlighted to make them easy to identify. You also get a far speedier response when the Hint feature is recharged and for the Skip option to appear when faced with a puzzle.
The game starts with an introductory sequence involving your nameless on-screen character being involved in a car crash in front of a mysterious graveyard. Being rather brave, or perhaps more to do with the weather and the fact that you do not belong to one of the roadside motoring rescue organisations, you decide to look for help inside the cemetery. I’m not sure who or what kind of help you would hope to find in this eerie location but it does set the stage for this hidden object adventure game.
As you explore the cemetery you will meet up with some of the occupants who happen to be ghosts. The ghosts you meet are rather restless and require your help to free their souls. This help involves you entering a portal that whisks you off to a location connected to the ghost as you carry out various tasks and solving a series of puzzles.
If you have selected the Regular game option then an individual sparkle will indicate areas to explore while the appearance of several sparkles draws you into a hidden object scene. As the game is based around the Redemption Cemetery, you should not be surprised to hear that the list of items to be located are carved into a tombstone which shrinks in size as you find items and the list gets smaller.
Not all the items will be in plain or even partial sight. In some cases they will be concealed within boxes, cupboards or drawers. So keep your eyes open for a sparkle that will light your way to a possible item.
Possibly due to the dark lighting used in many scenes, the Hint feature could be called into action more than usual. Each time this feature is used it will released a flock of ravens that will encircle a yet-to-be-discovered item. There will a delay of at least a minute before the Hint feature can be re-used. Indulging in a bout of indiscriminate mouse clicking, rather than use the Hint feature, will result in a cursor that is drunk for several seconds before you regain control of it.
At the conclusion of each hidden object session, you will be rewarded will one of the items you have found. This item will be added to your inventory which sits at the bottom of the screen. It is hidden from view until you actually need to select from its content. Other items that you find during your exploration of the various scenes will be automatically added to the inventory. Chevrons at each end of the inventory allow you to scroll through its content when it contains more items than it has room to show at one go.
As mentioned you need to explore areas connected to the ghosts you meet. This exploration will require a great deal of back-tracking to gather together items that will allow you to fulfil tasks. Many of the items you will require will be located elsewhere so causing you to revisit each location several times. If you do get stuck then you can always make use of the Strategy Guide which provides help and instruction on how to complete the different tasks.
Featuring well drawn graphics and animation, the game does require a certain amount of lateral thinking as some of the tasks are linked together and need to be completed in sequence. Often items only become available once you have carried out certain tasks. When conversation occur you get spoken dialogue with the words also being printed on screen. While there is plenty of tasks to complete and puzzles to be solved, the actual ghostly content is kept to a minimum – in fact at times you could forget about this aspect of the game.
While I enjoyed playing this game, it is not one that kept drawing me back for another session. Priced at £10.20, Redemption Cemetery: Curse of the Raven requires a 1.4GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 713MB of hard disk space running Windows XP and later.
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