Crossroad Mysteries: The Broken Deal is a hidden object game that has some good things going for it, but suffers from frustrating difficulty settings that hold it back. This is one situation in which no achievements was a godsend. I don't think I could've managed a no-hint/nightmare difficulty playthrough without tearing my hair out.
First, for the good. The artwork is gorgeous and encapsulates all that I love of "beauty in decay." I do so enjoy exploring deserted and crumbling structures. However, in order to appreciate its full beauty you need to play in windowed mode, as the original screen resolution is clearly lower than the 1920×1200 standard. This has the unfortunate side effect of making some of the items difficult to see, but 75% of the reason I play these games is for the artwork, so I had to do what I had to do to fully enjoy it. Atmosphere and music is also good with ambient themes and interesting sound effects that amplify the ominous surroundings. The voice acting was decent too, definitely better than a lot of other HOGs I've played.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1135601869
As for the story, it's campy and overly dramatic, and feels like they tried hard to be dark and gritty, but maybe a little too hard. There are a lot of religious references that may be a turn off for some people, so if you find churches and demons to be off-putting you may want to pass on this one. At least the written text is fluent, as a lot of HOGs coming to Steam these days tend to have some questionable translations.
Unfortunately, the difficulty is where things really stumbled for me. The way each is set up I felt like none were geared for how I play. Hard or Nightmare is what I'd normally run since there's usually no highlighting of active areas, but the tooltips are completely disabled on both of these difficulties leaving the rate at which hints/skips renew as the only difference between the two. And let me tell you, no tooltips in a HOG is the most frustrating experience ever. You're just clicking around on random things, and when a window does pop open there's no decription of what that thing is or any other clue to steer you in the right direction. It's just jostle it around a bit, then go back to fumbling in the dark again. So it was back to Easy/Normal for me, which both highlight active areas even though Normal isn't supposed to. I either played on super hard or super easy, and I was not at all happy with either option.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1149807789
The hidden object scenes on all difficulties were frustrating too. As is standard in most HOGs, there are several items that need to be assembled and/or activated in some way before you can clear them, but the items you need to pick up and use on another do not highlight when you mouse over them, so you have to randomly click on everything to find the one thing you can actually use. Yeah, not a fan of that setup at all. Hints are also limited and are sprinkled around the areas as hidden items, but I've seen this done in other HOGs and actually like how it forces you to manage your hint usage instead of spamming it every time the button lights up. Most of the puzzles were pretty unique, the difficulty of which is rather steep too. Had I not already been frustrated with the game, I'd probably have tried harder at them rather than skipping every other.
I really wanted to give this game a recommendation because I feel it had potential, but I simply cannot encourage others to play it when my experience was so miserable. Perhaps if you're one for super hard or super easy HOGs you might find some enjoyment in it, but for the price I can't say it's worth it. If you ravenously consume HOGs and are intent on grabbing it, though, wait for a sale or bundle.
On a final note...Arial typeset is the most generically low quality font you can use in a game, period. Not only does it look positively garish against the intricately painted backgrounds and UI, but makes the game look cheaply made. Please, for the love of all that's holy, do not use Arial in your games. Thank you. Good day.
[code][h1]Curated by: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33004802-Chudah%27s-Corner/]Chudah's Corner[/url][/h1][/code]
