Detective Agency - Search It Out

Detective Agency is a new hidden object release from Far Mills Game Studios and GFI. In Detective Agency, James is a private eye whose "daily proceedings revision" is interrupted by a call from his pal Bill at the "Editorial" who gives him a lead on a theft that's just been committed. He decides to "turn to this case."

In between levels you'll play a variety of mini-games, all of which are enjoyable though standard variations on familiar themes (connect the electrical tubes to close the circuit, match pairs of cards, decipher the secret message, and so on).

The story itself is a maddening series of visits to various buildings where no one will help you until you perform a mundane task for them first, like fixing a radio, turning on the lights, or – the most absurd – putting a man's pearl necklace back together.

And then inevitably they just tell you that they can't help you anyway, and to try a different location instead.

The levels aren't timed, but too much random clicking will result in your cursor being frozen for a few seconds. There are ample hints to be had, which are replenished by finding and clicking on tiny magnifying glasses hidden in the scenes.

Unfortunately, the hint system itself is annoying. Instead of just highlighting an item, you have to move a magnifying glass around the screen while it clicks and flashes confusingly until it suddenly begins beeping very quickly to signify that you're close to an item.

You have to find items either from a list or by silhouette, with the odd spot-the-difference challenge thrown in for good measure. The silhouette puzzles are far easier to deal with, since many of the items have been mis-labelled or are simply too vague.

Does "hat" refer to the beanie or the fedora? And "piece" could refer to half the objects in the scene. A "cell" is actually a birdcage, a "plate" is actually a bowl of rice, and "map" looks more like a paying card.

Detective Agency is another one of those games that could have used more guidance and localization before it was released to the general public.

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