Final Cut: Homage Collector's Edition

This third installment was nowhere near as fun a game as the first and second games. The second was the best of the series so far. This game had a very stupid and predictable story. Some bad guy calling himself The Director is inspired to commit murder and calls it art. Yep, haven't heard that one before. We are treated to a bunch of recordings of this godawful community college acting major spouting nonsense with this forced sinister sneer in his voice. It was so obvious who he was from the very beginning. The dialogue seemed to be written by the non-English speaking wing of Big Fish because some of the comments made by our heroine were inane and inappropriate at times. And the story itself was not well thought out. The murderer's goal was to tarnish the name of the great director Morton Wolf by framing his daughter for murder. However, his plan had absolutely nothing to do with Wolf beyond framing his daughter for a murder. How would that tarnish a great director's name when he's already been dead for years so is not around to see it? Even the way the guy was going to frame the daughter was stupid. Um, YOU are the one trespassing and had a gun on you. How did you think that was going to look like self defense? Did you think this through for even one second? Developers? Did ya? (tumbleweeds) The puzzles were more difficult in this game compared to the previous game. I don't enjoy constant spinning puzzles and there were quite a few of those here. Spin the wheel and line up all the reds with the reds, greens with greens, etc. I don't enjoy those. but you might. Even the HOP puzzles were not as fun because it was a lot of those interactive type where you just move things around or use the screwdriver to open the crate and that gets you the paperclip which you use to open the zipper. Those kind of HOPs instead of just giving you a list of things to find. I always viewed the HOPs as a break from the game in some way. Just a way to relax, look around, and click. But you really can't do that in this game because they were trying to be all things to all people. Bad call. The map is shoddily made and requires too many clicks to see where things are. You have to click on a circle and it takes you to another circle, often with chains across it for some unknown reason. You can still get to that location so the chains are meaningless. No idea why they didn't just keep the map the way it was in the other games and every other casual game. Click map, it shows you places you can travel, and you click them. We're not reinventing the wheel here. Another thing that made no sense is the locations in NY. They put the ship harbor in the center of midtown Manhattan (and no it wasn't meant to be the Central Park marina) and the train station looked to be in the middle of the East River. Why not just make it a fake city if you don't know the geography of NY? The strategy guide is all messed up too. Just shoddily put together. The morphing cheat sheet is all out of order and hard to follow. The game doesn't seem to want to help keep track of the collectibles so you have to count for yourself. The morphing objects are only in the HOP sections, so very easy to miss those. The tutorial doesn't even mention that there are collectibles so it's totally useless too. I don't think people need to be told how to click on items with a magnifying glass. But they DO need to be told when there are collectibles and morphing items. This game was a chore to finish. It was almost the game that made me want to stop playing these kinds of games. Something about it was just too predictable and the mini games too convoluted and just NOT FUN to play. Can't figure out why, but the game was just boring and hard to remain engaged. Hoping the next game is better.

Keeps very much at the same level as its predecessor with new locations and a new antagonist

this great game for mysteyr fans

Average buy on sale

This is Eipix at their fun best. I actually laughed out loud, right from the beginning joke to the end of 'how they made the game'. Great story line with all the Eipix trimmings, the souvenir room etc. Would have got all the achievements if I could have finished a HOP in 30 seconds and although you can find missed morphing objects in the extras it doesn't record the time. Keep your eye on the clapperboard collectables light or the map as the guide is not in order. I would love to work for this company. They so obviously enjoy making these games

Game play is fun and the puzzles are nice, but the game is buggy. An auto-quit event corrupted my save file so that no progress was saved beyond that point. I left the game open so that I could finish it but it auto-quit again right before the end. Very frustrating. Guess I won't see how it ends out (I am not repeating 2+ hours of game play a third time...!) All in all I would still recommend this game, and the series as a whole.