Mystery Stories: Berlin Nights, developed by Cerasus Media and published by Big Fish Games,is a hidden object game that, while presenting no significant twists of game play, stillfeatures some new ways to enjoy the game.
You will see Berlin and it's famous sights. If you manage to escape from kidnappers and stayalive, of course.
Michelle Deanfield is a journalist, and this time she travels to Berlin in order to find acentury-old machine which is presumably able to solve the energy problem of the modern humancivilization. Quite a mission, isn't it? But Michelle with her assistants are not the onlyteam hunting for the apparatus. Some mysterious cult is also chasing the missing parts ofthe machine, and they are determined to get what they want, as they need the energy to savetheir souls and lives. And the means they use for achieving their goals are not reallylegal, so be ready to find yourself kidnapped and your very life in danger. Do you stillwish to go?
Then welcome to the 74 levels of game play in Normal or Relaxed Mode. As in any hiddenobject game, in Berlin Nights you will have a number of items to find for each level, somehints and a time limit (if you prefer Normal Mode). In every stage the items to find arepresented in different forms, and that brings much diversity to the game play. Some tasksare standard, like names or images of items, some are used much more rarely, like sounds,and some unique, like, for example, a level where you find objects one by one, and each isdescribed with four word hints appearing one by one. The number of points you get forfinding an item depends on the number of hints you need to find it. There are also levelswhere the items to find are described in Michelle's phrases one by one, and quick searchlevels, where you have only 20 seconds to find something. And in some scenes you need toperform some actions with items in order to complete the level. All these make your gameexperience much more fun.
On every level you will find a number of bears - teddy bears, bronze bears, etc. Bear is thesymbol of Berlin, and in this game it is the symbol of a hint. Eahc of them gives you one ofthe bonuses, like Search Aid, Speed Search Aid, Bonus points, Stop Bonus, etc. They arequite numerous, so the needed help is almost always where.
There are also puzzle mini-games, each with its unique game play. You can either solve themor skip, if you get stuck or just don't like the particular puzzle.
On the whole the game is a nice example of the hidden object genre, and if you are in fordetective stories - it's worth trying.
