Journalist Journey: The Eye of Odin

This time around, Namco, the developer of many fine games, decides to pull our leg giving us an absolute slipshod hidden object game – Journalist Journey: The Eye of Odin. They make a fine mistake if they think that Barbie look-like heroin can make game sell.

To start with, this title suffers from the bizarre plot, thought it begins promisingly enough - mysterious murder and elements of myth. As the story progresses, it begins developing in a quite strange sort of way. This is probably one of the most unstructured hidden object experience where hunt for items does seem to make no sense. Journalist Journey: The Eye of Odin is bubbling with ridiculous hidden object directions. For example, heroes must visit Café to have a cup of coffee but there is no any coffee. The game offers us a really weird decision: go to home and visit past locations to look for a spoon, sugar and coffee powder there. Don’t you find it lame or at least strange?

Backtracking has never acted in gameplay’s favor but Namco seems to forget this rule. So, to finish one or another location you have to travel to far-far-off scenes for just a hammer or a bit of bread. The mini-games and few puzzles sometimes pop up between levels but they are extremely uninteresting and quite plain but take some time to work through. Still the long length of some puzzles does not say about their high challenge at all. There are lots of vivid sceneries, lots of fresh ideas, but it just got bogged down in its own desire for too much. As result we have a half-done game full of shortcomings.

21, May 2010