PuppetShow: Her Cruel Collection – Review

Marjory called for your help when her fiancé has been kidnapped by hooded figures in plague masks. As you dive deeper into the case, you discover something far more sinister lies behind. PuppetShow has now come to the ninth installment, with little progress.

First off, there is simply nothing innovative about the storyline in PuppetShow: Her Cruel Collection. At the end of the day, it’s just another game about kidnapping, with the puppets feeling more like gimmicks rather than essential parts of the game. What’s worse is that the story here barely makes sense – there are too many illogical events happening in the game that we were just not convinced.

Despite this being the ninth game in this long-running series, PuppetShow: Her Cruel Collection plays just like its predecessors. The adventure part is extremely predictable with all the mundane tasks, the puzzles are very familiar with little twists and the hidden object scenes are quite entertaining, yet nothing especially memorable. There is one feature in Her Cruel Collection that we enjoyed, the Mechanical Cat helper. It is not revolutionary, but fresh enough to hold our attention.

The best aspect of PuppetShow: Her Cruel Collection is certainly its production. We are glad that this installment of PuppetShow loses all the “fuzzy” elements that usually present in games from this developer. To our delight, the graphics are sharp and incredibly well drawn and painted. Besides, the animations and the cutscenes are also top-tier.

We didn’t find the four hours of PuppetShow: Her Cruel Collection boring at all, since the game is nothing but professionally executed. However, we didn’t find the game “special” either. If you decide to go with the Collector’s Edition, which might not be the worthy choice in our opinion, you will also get to play the fairly solid 1-hour bonus chapter. Other extras include wallpapers, screensavers, soundtracks, videos, concept art, replayable hidden objects, achievements and collectibles.