Explorer: Contraband Mystery

Nat Geo Games, the popularizer of solicitous treatment to animals, offer us their new hidden object adventure under the title Explorer: Contraband Mystery. Whatever the good intentions the developers have, the game itself is rather disgusting than alluring.

Honestly, there are very few points that make you enjoy this title. What we really respect is the developers’ special attention towards the nature problems. In regards to the game itself we find its all missions extremely boring with lots of irritating bugs. First, the hidden object puzzles are too difficult to solve because most of the items are too small to point out. Blurred, dark scenes in which the objects, although not clear, stand out as they do not blend in with the background. Get ready to make a lot if random clicks but, thankfully, there is no penalty for them. You will be constantly waiting for the hint recharge to finish the scene. This fact cannot but add to the general boredom with Explorer: Contraband Mystery.

As for the mini-games they are nothing to write home about them. Furthermore, there is a particular “cool” puzzle where you swap and rotate the pieces. The problem is that there are about fifty tiles in the puzzle and many of the tiles look very similar. In this connection, the process for successfully placing the background tiles becomes very monotonous, if not say irritable. You move a tile to where you think it might match and then rotate it all the way around. If it’s not the right tile, you have to start again and again. The best feature of these mini-games in general is that the “skip” button is always available and you needn’t wait for its reloading. To crown it all, Explorer: Contraband Mystery has no “save” option if you are in the middle of a scene. So if go out and in the game, you have to start the scene from the very beginning. Too boring! 

8, June 2010