Following the trend of games based on famous novels and legends, now it's the turn of Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby, a hidden-object game by I-Play. It is based upon F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, a story that depicts and satirizes life of the American society of the 1920's, chasing the 'American dream'. The story takes place on the glamorous New York and Long Island, and everything revolves around Jay Gatsby, a man of wealth that nobody seems to know very well.
The game is presented as a movie, displaying the cast along with a brief comment on their personality traits. As in the novel, it is Nick Carraway the one who narrates the story, and the character you embody throughout the game. As a new Gatsby's neighbor, you will be attending to lush parties and cocktails to socialize, while immersing in the story of the mysterious character.
Though not completely innovative as regards gameplay, the game succeeds at adding extra elements to the hidden-object hunt, in a way that it avoids getting repetitive. Hidden-object scenes show the typical list of objects that you need to find to advance in the story. Driving scenes require you to find the objects on the list, while driving a car through different locations. Some HOG scenes include interactive puzzles, where you need to make use of the objects collected; you may need to prevent party disasters, or prepare special cocktails to your guests. Additionally, every HOG scene hides a word related to a particular passage of the story. You need to find all the letters to complete this word or you can guess it right away, which will grant you extra points, trophies, and will make the hints refill faster.
Most HOG scenes are animated, and it's nice to see the characters interacting with each other at a party, people playing the piano or gossiping about Gatsby's fortune, as new pieces of the story are revealed through dialogs with the other characters. Parts where the story is told, or cutscenes, are also playable, and you can optionally play them to find a number of objects in the moving scene.
You can use the points collected to buy furniture and decorative items for your library. The trophies you are awarded during the game will be exhibited there as well. HOG scenes also hide books, that you can optionally collect to fill the bookshelves.
As you can see, the game offers a lot of new elements and twists that seem to complement the HOG gameplay quite well, often making you feel you are playing a completely new game type.
It is worth to mention the great artwork and the level of detail put in every scene, object, and character, as well as the soundtrack that evokes the America of the 1920s.
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