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Questerium: Sinister Trinity Collector's Edition HD
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Graphics & Sound:
Questerium: Sinister Trinity Collector's Edition HD has a peculiar aesthetic, but this doesn't mean it isn't pleasing to the eye. The backgrounds and areas you will visit all appear to be hand-drawn, but clearly not meant to be realistic, at least as far as the strange mutations that have been happening since the town was struck by a meteorite. However, all of the human characters in the game appear to be actual video integrated into the drawn backgrounds. Because of this disconnect, it can look a bit odd at times. Also, I believe the game was developed in German and then localized for the US, so sometimes the words don't quite synch up with the speaker's lips.
All of that being said, the game's areas in the town that you will visit all look good, whether you are investigating around the town square, the various businesses and offices in the town, or even the mad Professor Gustav's lab. You will encounter strange happenings and mutated plant life because of the meteor, so be on your guard.
The voice acting is very overdone and a little bit silly at times, but it's not unbearable. Background music is a mix of foreboding, dark and rousing music, while the sound effects do their job quite well.
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Gameplay:
Questerium: Sinister Trinity Collector's Edition HD centers around a town that has had a meteor land in the vicinity. The town's mayor has teamed up with his two closest friends since childhood, the local banker and Professor Gustav, in the hopes that the meteor's odd powers can help the town a great deal. Soon, strange and dangerous plant mutations started showing up and the mayor evacuated the town, but two young children were left behind and it is your job to find and rescue them, and to see what Gustav is really up to with his experiments.
During the first part of your investigation, you will run into a strange glowing blue man who seems to emanate electricity. Any time you get close to saving the kids, he shows up, but all is not as it seems. As you begin to unravel the truth behind what is really going on, you'll come across Hidden Object Scenes, you'll hunt for items in your environment, and encounter fiendish puzzles that stand in the way of your progress.
The Hidden Object Scenes are fairly basic; you are presented with a list of items to locate in a scene, with some of them being more hidden than others, requiring an extra step or two to locate. The 21 puzzles (mini-games) you'll be faced with are some of the most innovative and devilishly difficult ones I have encountered in a long time. There are your typical slide puzzles, a chess variant, a Towers of Hanoi puzzle, some requiring you to match designs and elements, and some involving pressure gauges. My favorite is sort of a Pac-Man variant where you must get a ball from one end of a maze to the other while not getting zapped by the other balls moving throughout the field. While I skipped some puzzles that were simply tedious and I had figured out how to solve them and just didn't have the patience to play them out, some puzzles were so much fun I would go back to them in the Extras Menu, once I beat the game.
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Difficulty:
Questerium: Sinister Trinity Collector's Edition HD has four difficulty levels: Casual, Normal, Hard and Professional. Casual allows you to leisurely play the game, with the Skip and Hint buttons charging pretty quickly and Active Zones being highlighted with sparkles. Playing on Normal means your Hint and Skip will charge slightly slower and your Active Zones aren't highlighted. Hard leaves you hanging in the wind with no Hint or Skip buttons and naturally, no Active Zones highlighted either. Professional difficulty is the same as Hard, except even your Thoughts are disabled, so you are truly on your own.
As I said earlier, some of the puzzles are pretty difficult. While they were all pretty much variants of puzzles you may have seen before, most of them had some crazy additional twist. For instance, in a pipe puzzle, typically you rotate the pipes to get them all aligned, but here, you have to do that but instead of simply one pipe rotating, the whole tile that pipe was on rotates. Think bigger, badder and harder puzzles than normal.
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Game Mechanics:
Questerium: Sinister Trinity Collector's Edition HD uses the typical tap and swipe gestures that you are accustomed to in most games of this type. You'll also gain Achievements as you progress, and you can find money along the way as well. When you look at the Map, you can see where you are, where you need to go in order to accomplish a task, where a delayed task may be, and finally, where a secret is located. This means there is money hidden somewhere and picking it up means it goes into your wallet for you to spend decorating your garden. It seems a bit odd, but it was fun to embellish my garden with beautiful Japanese trees and gorgeous statues. You should also keep you eyes pealed for the mutated plants so you can locate all 15 of them.
Once you have beaten the main game, there is a further adventure which I assume is the part of the game that comes with "Collector's Edition." You will also have access to wallpapers, concept art, and all of the mini-games (except for one) to replay at your leisure.
Overall, Questerium: Sinister Trinity Collector's Edition HD is a slightly different hidden object adventure, but it is a fun experience with some innovative twists to its puzzles. Check it out if you are up to the challenge!
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
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