Haunted Hotel: Ancient Bane HD - A Ghostly Hidden Object Game 9+

The game was overall pretty good. The graphics in the HOS were crisp and colorful, I enjoyed the storyline, the mini puzzles were challenging but doable and it was a decent addition to a great series. Now for the issues...there was way too much back and forth needed. It was literally like take one item from a room, go use it in another room then immediately you have to go back to that same room for another item and then go back to the room you just left and so on and so forth! The hint button was in a terrible location and I hit it accidentally a few times blowing my "no hint" achievement. Then there's the achievement room where the achievements are only labeled/listed when you haven't achieved them yet. Once you have achieved something it no longer says what the achievement was which is pretty frustrating especially at the end when you want to see all of the things you were able to accomplish. And my last 2 issues...the main game and bonus chapter both seemed on the short side and there was only 12 extra items to search for throughout the game and no morphing items, both features that have become "must haves" for me.

There was nothing horribly wrong with this game, but nothing new or interesting about it either. Premise is an ancient Egyptian stealing souls in an old hotel. Seen it? Graphics were beautiful, and some games were unique, but HOS were just lists with the occasional combining or moving to get an object. There is a good teleporting hint button and a map, and collectibles. Biggest problem was the plethora of tasks, locks, and inventory objects. At one point I counted 16 items in my inventory. It was just too much-got to the point where I just hinted my way through to the end. Didn't care anymore and couldn't remember what went where. Didn't crash on me, though. The last task to eliminate the bad Egyptian didn't work at all. Either bad directions or no response.

As other reviewers have noted - this is a short game. I loved the intriguing beginning - and had high hopes for this game. Quickly though the problems to solve became the same old sharpen this, unscrew that. Mini-games we're easy - two or three were different from the usual which was nice. Most of the action flowed well and made sense. I was a little peeved when I tried to unscrew a grate with a coin and that didn't
work. I HAD to find the screwdriver. All in all - an average game.