okies so how is it much more than that? the story is ok...... how else?
also does that mean that the site will now start to review every HOG? because i found lost in the city to be one of the best of the casual offerings and that was far more adventure than 3 cards. the only thing that was decent about 3cm was the storyline the rest of it was pure hide and seek. and before everyone starts on about budget again i think we should take a moment to remember the piss poor budget the the majority of indie developers work with, fair enough 3cm is a decent casual game my point is only that it still isnt particularly adventureish, its casual no matter how its dressed up.

I semi agree. I think a bunch of these developers are just trying to take a piece of the casuals market loot while trying to somehow fool/still sell to the adventure game market. There are plenty of great 1 man operations like diamonds in the rough/dark fall...

Plus, ALL of the casual games have DRM.

How much worse can it get?

I agree with loobylou26. This isn't a "partly adventure game" just because there is a basic story. Actually, giving tags like "partly", "hybrid" etc into casual and non-adventure games looks at least silly. If we accept such thing, Assassins Creed, Hitman etc are "partly adventure games" because they have a story. Which of course are not.

3CM is a pure hidden object casual game. Which isn't so great after all. I found the latest Samantha Swift game much better. And it has a story too. But it is a hidden object game as well

Regarding the bugs, it seems I'm not alone, and they're working on a fix:
http://www.bigfinishgames.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

The cheap, honest answer here is that the game is from a team that developed some of the best adventure games of all time and the fans here were particularly anticipating it so, even though it's somewhat out of concept, it's appropriate to review it here. Think of it like a band's fansite reviewing one of the members solo albums. It's like that.

The game was #7 on the hype-o-meter so that alone merits a review in my opinion. Frankly, your problem isn't that AG reviewed it, it's that you didn't read the review.

No one said it was part-adventure "just because there is a basic story", so I'll ignore the strawman argument. But to answer the question before it, it's more than a hidden object game and partly an adventure because:

A) Determining the object list is an entirely different layer of puzzle-solving not found in HOGs. The objects aren't hidden; they're in plain view serving as clues to the answers. It's more of a word game than a HOG. In fact, it's almost an anti-hidden object game.

B) The item collection sequences in 3CM are fully integrated into the storyline. There's a reason for what you're doing, and how you do impacts what happens. In most HOGs, most casual games in general, the gameplay is simply an end in and of itself. Here it's a means to legitimately serve the story. The fact that the depth and prevalence of the story blows most adventures away certainly doesn't hurt, but the integration is the key.

Those two points combine to fit AG's basic definition of an adventure: "Adventure games focus on puzzle solving within a narrative framework." That's not our full definition, but it's the key foundation. If your own definitions are different, that's fine, but this is ours, and has been as long as I can remember. We were going to cover it anyway, so the only difference is that we graded this one, and honestly, I can't understand why anyone would be bothered that we did.

incorrect the problem in my opinion is that i wouldnt suspect adventure gamers would place a casual game on its hype-o-meter. i have been proved wrong in my assumption that only adventure games would feature on the list. i will also be more aware in checking other sites ie. rpgfan's may now start including virtual villagers and such as they could be percieved by some as rpgs. or better yet being more thorough when checking action sites as they may start listing match 3 games as new titles.

Oh, please. The Hype-o-Meter is based on games that haven't been released yet, and gauges only general fan interest, period. CSI: NY was on the list briefly as well, then turned out to be entirely different than we expected. If you base anything on a list of pre-release game buzz, you should expect to be disappointed sometimes.

wow how? sorry for my dumbfounded answer to this remark but seriously?!? the game maybe a slightly new twist to a HOG but none the less it is still a HOG,and if you would really like to go down the route of a word game being adventure then maybe beeline should be considered one 2? also to be brutally honest i dont understand the steadfast defensiveness of a few of the admin of this site. this game is casual! the makers and storyline may be well above what you would expect from a casual game however the gameplay is not hugely different. imho you are basically looking at a match 3 game with the twist of it being a match 4 for instance and rating it along such greats as tlj or myst. absurdity. the game maybe pretty it may have a twist but it defo aint ALL THAT. again if the site is to start to review casual games then why not lost in the city (replayed today and i love it ;)) or many of the other great casual titles that are around?

seeing as there is a max of 3 words per scene it is hardly a challenge now is it? and considering the designers place the items to be found to match the words again not really too complex for them tbh. also i seem to be back on the track of an interactive movie considering as you say we should bypass the gameplay and concentrate on the fact that the story is unfolding. also i am very intrested in how my finding a cushion in the shape of a heart or a mask adds to the whole story issue?!?

i guess i just expected that the site would either include all or none. to include just certain casual games and rate them alongside the greats (4 stars in this instance) just seems slightly strange to me :)

even adventure gamers were surprised when csi ny turned out like it did. and on that strand many gamers are hyped about resident evil 6 so will that be featured??? or maybe fable 3?

Seems you're intent on putting words into my mouth. Did I say word games = adventure? No. Challenge? Never mentioned it. And the HoM remarks are just being silly. Enough.

Why is this even an issue? I really don't have time to argue, and don't see the value in it anyway. It's not "defensiveness" to explain the reasoning that you yourself questioned. But now I've done that, and if the answers don't satisfy you, c'est la vie. It's one review, time to move on.

And you keep asking about other casual games. You do know we've covered quite a few of the more adventure-relevant hidden object games in recent months, right? And we'll continue to do that, as there's a fair bit of crossover interest. Normally we won't bother grading them, as they're all largely variations of the same thing. 3CM isn't (in our view if not yours), so we graded it. We may indeed cover Lost in the City. In fact, it's on my list of casual games to look into.

Your kidding me? The previous CSI games were Adventure based. Its an honest but surprising mistake that CSI NY didn't follow the same path.

Not to mention your argument with Jackal is just sad.

I started playing the game and I must say that I'm also finding it really disappointing. Personally I don't really have any problems with casual games, I enjoy playing them. So, a casual game with a really good story was something I thought I would enjoy. However, I find myself really frustrated while playing the game. It's impossible to be able to find the right objects without using hints or restarting the level which makes it a tedious trial and error procedure. Quite often you can't really make out what some of the objects are, some word associations are really far fetched, some seem to require from the player knowledge that, most likely, people who english is their native language would have, some are completely unknown to me (what the hell is a

Spoiler:

"love 15"

???). To be honest I feel cheated. I guess it would be bearable if this "word association" thing was a single puzzle but unfortunately the whole game is based on it.

The puzzles on the other hand are enjoyable so far (I'm only in chapter 2).
So is the story. And these are the only two things that keep me from unistalling the game.

The review clearly stated that 3CM requires an excellent English knowledge. Personally, not being English myself, I found that a good dictionary incredibly helped.

As for the argument about casual/non-casual, an argument that was utterly foreseeable, I think that Jackal already said everything: in many articles we stated that we were keen to review those casual games that leaned more toward adventures. And what makes a casual game lean more toward adventure? In my opinion, (1) a good story and (2) a clever integration of gameplay and story.

For example, the first Women Murder Club had a great story and a great writing (which comes to no surprise, since Jane Jensen is behind it), but its gameplay was pretty detached from these elements, since the HO phases played typically, which means that the list was completely random and not at all tied into the story (example of items to find: sugar cane, carrot, 21 little gems, etc). The second WMC, on the other hand, was more adventure-oriented, with much better integrated challenges and a more coherent gameplay. Exactly like 3 Cards from Midnight, where - regardless of the greatness of the story - the word association process, while similar from a very superficial point of view to an HOG, not only is brilliantly written into the plot but also stunningly motivated by Jess' current situation (her loss of memory, the Tarot Dealer, etc.).

Oh, and by the way, The Legend of the Crystal Valley wasn't a casual game at all, even if it was released in a casual version that was a simplified version of the main one.

Cheated? I don´t really know who cheated you with this game.
I had to get used to the whole word association thing too, especially as someone who is not a non native english-speaker, but it didn´t take me long to completely get lost within the story and atmosphere , which in the end made the whole word association thing a lot more enjoyable than my fist attempts in the -let´s say first 30 minutes- (still not saying it was always easy) . This game surely isn´t for everyone but i think that the review and the comments of Jackal and Andrea sum up everything about this game and its intention perfectly clear, even though some people seem to push these general arguments byside.. I enjoyed this game a lot, thanks to the wonderful writing, the great atmosphere and sound plus the circumstance how perfectly everthing is woven into each other, while the mainpurpose is always the support of the story, and this is a pretty big contrast to a "normal" Casual Game to me. So , no matter what label you want to find, (i think the term" story-driven game" works perfectly here) -whether you like the concept or you don´t like it (which is the good right of everyone) just saying this is just a Casual Game and AG shouldn´t report about it, doesen´t do the concept of the game any justice. I´d like to quote something from the review here i really liked ( i like the whole review a lot despite that): "...calling it a hidden object game would be like saying an icecube sank the Titanic..." . Couldn´t agree more .

Thanks! That was my favorite part too! :P

So there are actually two different versions of Crystal Valley? Now that's really confusing for potential buyers. :crazy:

I said I feel cheated because solving the hidden object puzzles requires assumptions and knowledge that the game doesn't provide. It just assumes that you have it, which in my opinion it's not fair.

Exactly the same game, except one version has some user-friendly helps in it for adventure newcomers, like a starting tutorial and some pop-up tips (not sure about those in particular, but something along those lines and nothing more).

Oh man, it is? Just when I thought it was safe to skip the second one having written about the first. :P

It's a tennis score.