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Genre: Puzzle

Developer: Big Fish Games

Minimum System Requirements: 400MHz G3, Mac OS X, 128MB RAM

Price: $19.99

Demo: 51MB (must provide e-mail address)

Now, I don't pretend to have great detective skills. In fact, I have no interest in having such skills. Okay, sure, I'm pretty good at an evening game of 221B Baker Street, and it's usually not hard for me to figure out when that sociopathic friend I have is lying to me again, but I otherwise have no interest in solving crimes or in those who solve crimes or especially in TV shows about those who solve crimes.

And yet, I enjoyed Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects (MCF). Why? Well, as Jack Jose pointed out in his review of Mystery Case Files: Huntsville, this game isn't about solving crimes, it's about finding things.

It's like those old Where's Waldo? books, only you're looking for multiple items, not just a dorky looking guy in a red and white hat, and the items can be hidden in impossible places, and there's often more than one of each item, and the items aren't always what you're looking for. By that last comment, I mean that...well, in one puzzle I had to find two planes. My three year old daughter, who knows that planes should be in the sky, quickly found the first one. The second had us stumped to very end, so I eventually had the game give me a hint. MCF hints aren't actually hints, but answers, because they just tell you flat out where the object is. In this case, it ends up we weren't looking for a plane, but for a plaaaaaaaaaane...the tool used to flatten a wooden surface. See what they did there?

MCF is continually clever like that. Each screen is jammed with objects that could be what you're looking for, but aren't. And sometimes, what you were looking for in the previous screen is here as well, only not as well hidden. When being told to find two spades, one could be a gardening tool hidden in a bucket or something, while the other is a spade symbol from a deck of cards hidden in a poster on the side of a wall. It's therefore easy to get jumbled up, but your list of items remains on the right of the screen to keep you on track.

Now, if all you did was look at cluttered images to pick out small objects for the whole game, it would get boring (and headache inducing) quite quickly. MCF is smarter than that. It gives you multiple locations (pictures) to complete within a set period of time, which makes the matter urgent but insurmountable. You don't have to actually find everything (in fact, even if you could, the game will cut you off when you've found enough), and there are the four hints you can get across the different locations. They'll be needed, because the game gets especially tough when the lights go out and you have to use a flashlight to find the items.

After you clear the locations, a suspect is considered or dismissed, and you're then given a kind of mini-game. These come back at the lab where you have to take the clues you've accumulated (kind of) and use the games to decipher them (kind of) to determine whether your suspect is guilty. I say "kind of" because the mini-games are only loosely related to the clues you've picked up, and it's not really up to you to figure out who's guilty and who isn't. But, the games are fun, be they picture puzzles or word puzzles or whatever, and they're a good way to conclude a level (22 levels through 29 locations).

The graphics in Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects are quite ornate and, despite the clutter, attractive. They come together with the puzzles to create a unique, distinctive feel much like how the artwork of Clue is as much a part of that game as is the puzzle solving.

I did have a few problems with the game, however, that I need to pass along. First, and this is a big one, it froze up on me a few times. I didn't think that happened on the Mac these days, but I guess it still can. Consider yourself warned, as you may find yourself needing to replay a few levels. Second, when playing in full screen mode on my 20" iMac, the playing field didn't fit, disappearing off the bottom of the monitor. I therefore had to play in windowed mode, which, on a widescreen iMac, is very small. If you have bad eyes, that'll make the game almost impossible to play. And third, there's not much replay value to MCF, as all it does is hide objects in different places on the same screens, but I'm not sure replay's necessary. You'll get $19.99 out of it by playing through just once, and there'll no doubt be another game in the series right behind (Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst has already been released on the PC).

You can download a trial version of Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects. I suggest you do. If you don't like it, so be it. No harm. If you do like it even a little, chances are you'll like it a lot, and I have a feeling you'll soon have the whole series on your desktop. And seriously, you'll have more fun with it than with any crime show on TV.

Download Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects.