There's a New Sheriff in Town
Well technically, M.P.I. isn't a sheriff, but a Private Investigator, and you've been asked to play that role. That's right. You take on the lead role as the famous Mystery P.I. in the fantastic new "find and seek" game. Any of you "find and seekers" out there will have an absolute ball with this one. I was absolutely absorbed from the get-go and spent a lot more time in front of my computer screen than I care to admit.
$488 Million Dollars!
The story in Mystery PI is quite entertaining, especially when compared to the usual stories that can be found in PC games. Sweet ol' Grandma Rose lost her winning lottery ticket and the jackpot was a whopping $488 million! Talk about heartbreak; that's a lot of money! Fortunately for you, she feels that you're the woman (or man) for the job. She's hired you to track down the missing ticket and, if you find it, she'll reward you with $20 million bucks. That's enough money for you and all of your friends to retire on!
There is a catch, though. The lottery has a deadline and it comes up in 12 hours. If you don't find the ticket by then, you can kiss that cash goodbye. You'll have to think and solve the puzzles fast if you're going to come out on top.
Are You Ready For This?
Hidden object game fans will forget about all the other games when they see what this baby has to offer. In each level, you'll have to travel to various locales around the city and hunt down certain items. As you progress through the game, the number of objects that you have to find skyrockets, making the game a very worthy challenge. After you successfully find all the objects in a level and solve a puzzle you'll receive a clue to the overall mystery and location of the ticket. There are 20 clues in total, which means that you're going to have to devote some serious time here in order to find that ticket. At the end of the game you must piece the clues together and solve the riddle!
Aside from the normal seek stages, each level is topped off with a cool memory matching game similar to concentration. However, it has a lot more to offer than your standard matching game. As you get further into the adventure, you have to start matching things based on certain properties, such as color and type. On other levels, you even have to match items that simply work together (objects that are related to each other in some way), such as horses and horseshoes and walnuts and nut crackers.
Amazing Quality Art and Gameplay!
I was blown away at the shelf life that this game has. A lot of the hidden picture games can be finished and forgotten much too quickly. That isn't the case here. Solving the mystery took me days and when when you do finally finish the game, the sense of satisfaction you get is enormous, plus you can re-play the game a second time and see all new items. Once you find ALL THE HIDDEN KEYS you unlock the bonus game mode Unlimited Seek & Find which allows you to find every single item in every scene including a cool bonus location. With over 2000 items to find this game is jam packed with fun!
The variation in gameplay and theme really spices up the action and helps make Mystery P.I. - The Lottery Ticket a rockin' good time. Too many other seek and find products grow stale too quickly due to repetition, but SpinTop has taken steps to make sure that that doesn't happen. My detective hat is off to them.
Case Closed: Get This Game!
Mystery PI is, without a doubt, the most fun I've had at my computer in a long time. The game presents a fun challenge that's difficult but never frustrating. The story is an enjoyable one that had me pretty excited to locate the ticket, and it's all wrapped up in a visually pleasing package. All in all, it's an amazing product that should be in every gamer's library.
