Dead Link: Pages Torn

Except for the price, everything in [i]Dead Link: Pages Torn[/i] can be categorized as “average” and even that is in most cases an overstatement. For $8 you get a (barely) 2h game with a rather lame and cliche story, poorly explained puzzles, buggy achievements and few other elements that clearly don’t belong in a HOG. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1978727267 You play as Ellen, a book author who visits her sister Amanda, in hopes to find an adventure that could make a good story and overcome her writer's block. Upon arrival, she finds a dead body in front of the manor’s gates, and after a bit of investigation with a flashlight, she concludes it’s Amanda. We are led to believe this until the very end of the game, when (unsurprisingly) it is revealed that the person was not Amanda, which opens up the question: “how difficult is to recognize your own sister, especially since you can shed light on her face and see her features clearly?”. HOG players are certainly not that gullible, but this huge plot hole simply invalidates the whole story (at least it did for me). The second and maybe even a bigger disappointment related to the story was the fact that Ellen …

I'm a huge hidden object games fan and compared to the other titles I have in my library, this is not one of my favourites. The storyline is okayish - the developers went with a more realistic storyline than the normal fantasy storyline one would associate with this genre. The story however did not really grab my attention, which is possibly due to the voice acting of the characters. I found myself switching off the sound and reading the subtitles rather than playing with the sound on. The game is also fairly short and the puzzles are relatively easy for the genre. I did find myself stuck on one or two puzzles but this was more due to the instructions not being very clear rather than the difficulty of the puzzles. All in all it's definitely not one of the worst HOG out there - it just isn't one of the best either. It's average. If you are a hardcore HOG fan, this might not be the best fit for you but if you're new to HOG, it's a good introduction to the genre. (I'm only not recommending this game because there isn't an 'average' option on Steam and like I said at the beginning of this review, it's not one of my favourites in my library.)

Chill to just click around and find stuff, super easy puzzles.

Good graphics and more adult material.

The cursor hand is permanently splayed open - looks like rigormortis - very distracting when trying to pick up items.

Nice story, very easy puzzles and HO, straightforward. It could have been better but it is worth it :-)