Hidden object games seem to be having something of a revival on the mobile platform, presumably now the screens are of a decent enough resolution to hide a small hamster or a crowbar within a jumble of on-screen miscellanea.
Yes, a hamster. McVenture is a game about a team of adventurous archaeologists setting out to uncover a mystery that our protagonist's father never managed to solve. It's all very Indiana Jones (or dare I be contemporary and say Nathan Drake?) only without the vertiginous excitement.
X marks the spotThe game begins with a pidgen English introduction to the three rather shallow characters who you're accompanying on this quest to find an ancient treasure. There's almost nothing in the way of decent characterisation, though it's not quite the broken leg that a more involved type of game would suffer.
After a bit of stilted banter and inane back and forth between these characters, you're shown a screen packed with detail. Graphically the game is very well equipped, and the objects don't stand out to the point that McVenture becomes an exercise in pointing a cursor at specific items.
There's a huge amount of detail in the backdrops, but the objects you're looking for are still well defined once you eventually manage to hunt them down.
Where's my hamster?Hidden object games really aren't designed to be especially exciting, but when attached to an exploration and mystery story like McVenture, there does need to be some kind of consistency.
You find yourself, however, searching for very random objects with apparent association to the adventure you're on. Initially you need to find a map and some artefacts before heading off to the wilds of some ancient land, but you're required to scour your father's office looking for masks, a pair of glasses and a hamster.
The storyline is shabby at best, and the structure of the mystery means there's no real detective or archaeological work to be done - just a series of flimsy pretexts for searching the screen for strange items.
If you can ignore the plot aspect (not easy to do what with all the trite dialogue the game throws up) then McVenture succeeds as a basic hidden object game. But if you're looking for a good mystery thriller attached to the hide and seek gameplay, it'll be a long and ultimately fruitless search in McVenture.
McVenture and the SacredTemple
While the hidden object gameplay works exactly as it should in a series of great looking and impressively detailed levels, McVenture's story, dialogue and characters fail abruptly, dragging down the puzzle elements somewhat
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.