It's a fairly decent HOG based on the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher." Of course, there's a lot of liberty taken with how the story plays out, especially given the locations you visit. However, it's not a bad game overall. I've played a lot of hidden object games...probably dozens at this point, so I feel I can point out some of the positives of this specific one.
Since this is the Collector's Edition, you get a "bonus chapter/game" (Not really a chapter like most other collector's editions. This one has you analyzing some evidence from an unrelated crime to find out who the culprit is. Hold up if you think this sounds good because it's not as good as it sounds. I'll explain in a bit). You also get wallpapers, music, the cinematics, achievements (that don't matter for Steam at all since they don't count on here), and a strategy guide.
The map is a decent feature. I've seen better in other games, but since there's a lot of backtracking, you will want to use the map since it can allow you to jump to areas where there are things you can do. Teleporting on the map helps a lot in games like this where you're stuck going back and forth repeatedly over the same areas.
Now, for that bonus chapter/game I mentioned above. As you play the normal game, you have to find these model houses in the game scenes, click on them to get a minigame where you use a magnifying glass to find coins, and use those coins to buy gear for your forensics lab. I know you think this probably sounds cool, but it's not as cool as you'd think. I was pretty sure I got every house and every coin in the game and still was missing like 40 coins to have my lab completely outfitted, which meant I couldn't access the bonus game...without replaying the entire game and looking for houses I might've missed. No thanks. That's absolutely not fun and not okay with me. It pissed me off so much I almost didn't recommend the game at all. As it is, I'm just warning anyone who wants to play the game to look for those collectible coins in the houses and check the strategy guide often to make sure you aren't missing anything.
The HOG's were not that great. I did appreciate the ones where you had to do extra steps to find an item, but overall, there were a few of these HOG's that didn't seem to make a lot of sense (like finding all the tiny pieces to make a shovel or all the miniature pieces to make a well-shaped figurine). Not enjoyable. I've seen games do HOG's much better than this one did.
Minigames ran the gamut from extremely easy to "what the heck is this even supposed to be doing again?" At least some of these minigames were unique, compared to other games in this genre.
But, the biggest irritation for the game (aside from the coin issue I already mentioned) was the ending. It is abrupt...it's like, "This is what you do.." You do it and the credits roll. There's nothing much to it. Not much of an ending, to be honest.
But, it's not a bad game. It's just not a game I want to play again just so I can have all the coins to access the "bonus game" that shouldn't (in my opinion) have required this to be able to be played. It's either a bonus you're getting for buying the game...or it's not. I don't feel it was fairly set up personally.
Otherwise, it's an okay game for the genre and not a bad way to spend a few hours. Mainly play the game if you really love HOG's and like Poe's work. Otherwise, find a different HOG that might be less annoying in the long run.
