Mystery Case Files: Shadow Lake starts off like the previous games in the series. You, “The Master Detective,” are summoned to a spooky location at the behest of a third party. In this case, that third party is psychic Cassandra Williams—played by Lea Thompson of Back to the Future fame—and the location is Shadow Lake. Cassandra is working as a consultant for the TV show Ghost Patrol, but something spooked the talent and you’ve been asked to investigate.
The first thing that struck me upon starting Shadow Lake is how sharp everything looks. The game features high-resolution graphics and the difference between it and the standard artwork that populates most other HOGs is astounding. Everything is crisp and rendered to near photo-realistic levels, making it feel much more immersive than the painted environments of other HOGs. This photorealism also means that the full motion video—another first for the genre—used to tell the story doesn’t feel out of place, so you’re never pulled out of the experience by an awkward piece of art or animation.
The differences from other games in the genre don’t stop at the looks, however. Shadow Lake does something different with the gameplay as well. Take the hidden-object sequences as an example. In most other games of the genre, you’re never really given a reason why you’re finding random items like butterflies and lightbulbs and drawings of eyes. Shadow Lake sidesteps this by explaining the objects have residual spiritual energy that, once collected, can shed new light on the mysteries surrounding the town. Also, in other hidden-object games, items are all neatly contained in scenes that are separate from the main environment. Shadow Lake doesn’t do that, and instead makes you hunt for items in the while simultaneously exploring and solving puzzles. This means you’ll scour all the rooms in a building to find the dozen or so objects you’ve been asked to instead of just looking at a single screen. That might sound like a superficial change, but it makes Shadow Lake feel more immersive, less hidden-objecty, and more like a traditional adventure.
There is another twist to the basic hidden object gameplay, as well. Periodically, Cassandra will give you a half-dozen sketches. These are drawings of objects in the world, and your job is to match them up with the real item to charge them with spiritual energy. Match up all six sketches and you will be presented a jigsaw puzzle style mini-game, the successful completion of which will unlock a new location in the game world and move the story forward. Don’t roll your eyes at the thought of a jigsaw puzzle, Shadow Lake’s creativity and style run rampant here as well. Firstly, the puzzle pieces are actually squares containing full motion video clips. You have to put the right square in the right spot by matching up how the video plays, and not by connecting identical jagged edges. Also: the puzzle pieces have physics applied to them, which makes simply moving them around a challenge, but not an annoying one.
When you’re not finding hidden objects, you’ll encounter a few lock-and-key puzzles, and the occasional logic one. The designers managed to stay away from the many clichés that populate the genre. Not once did I have to play a memory-matching or tile-sliding game. Instead I had to use logic and deduction to figure out safe combinations, repair locking mechanisms, and, in the best puzzle ever, properly connect wires in a fusebox. I’d go so far as to suggest that if it weren’t marketed as a “hidden-object game,” Shadow Lake could pass for a more traditional adventure.
I was provided the Collector’s Edition to review, which contains a bonus area integrated into the main game, the ability to unlock morphing objects, a selection of wallpapers, and a making-of documentary. The first two bonuses are connected. The extra area contains three puzzles that provide you with a mask that unlocks morphing objects hidden in the rest of the game’s locations. If you find all 50 of these objects, you’ll receive… well, I don’t want to spoil it, but I found the end result to be underwhelming. Fans of the series seemed to like it, however, judging from comments on the Big Fish forums. The wallpapers are alright, I guess, but the making-of documentary is worth watching for the insight it provides into the production process. Don’t worry about missing out on any content if you decide to go for the regular edition, however. The extra area and morphing objects don’t change the story or even shed new insight into it. They’re just there as fanservice, as is everything else in the Collector’s Edition.
Any complaints I can level against the game are not really valid criticisms and more along the lines of what I wish Big Fish had done. I wish the Ghost Patrol had a larger role in the plot. I wish there was more to see and do than just explore the same ghost-ridden deserted environments that populate every other hidden-object game. I wish, I wish, I wish. I can’t hold these things against Shadow Lake, however, because then I’d be reviewing the game I wanted to play, and not the one I actually did.
Conclusion—Is It Worth The Money?
And the game I actually did play was fantastic. I was immersed and engrossed the entire time I played. The hidden object genre is so competitive that it’s very hard to stand out, but Big Fish managed to do so with Mystery Case Files: Shadow Lake. It’s a fantastic HOG that is well worth the $20 asked for it, even if you’re the kind of gamer that prefers more traditional adventures.
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