Mystery Trackers: The Secret of Watch Hill – Review

Fifteen years ago, an incident in your hometown of Watch Hill took up the lives of your parents and your baby brother Will. Today, a brand new Mystery Trackers task leads you back to your cursed hometown. The mysterious force returns to Watch Hill and leaves its innocent citizens memoryless. Can you solve this latest challenging case and save your hometown in Mystery Trackers: The Secret of Watch Hill?

Right from the beginning, the Mystery Trackers series flawlessly fuses modern gadgets and technology with large-scale investigative storylines. While lately, the science fiction lite elements have been quite inconsistent, they come in full force with Mystery Trackers: The Secret of Watch Hill. Unfortunately, the storyline in this sixteenth sequel is no match for those in the series’ glorious early days. From the predictable story development to some downright corny moments, everything is done so plainly without any nuance to the point that the game is devoid of any suspense.

Similarly, the gameplay here is also very much formulaic. In Elephant Games‘ fashion, each location is stuffed with tasks and the player can expect to be kept busy at all times. However, these tasks are so predictable and mundane that they quickly become redundant and tedious. The same goes for the hidden object scenes and the puzzles which are mostly uninspiring. The gameplay definitely could have utilized the Sci-Fi-esque storyline better and offers more than just the same-old dog helper. Although this time around, the dog helper is totally optional which might come as a delight to some.

There is nothing much to write home about regarding the production of Mystery Trackers: The Secret of Watch Hill. The location designs are not outstanding enough to save the game from becoming a lifeless adventure and the soundtracks are not exciting enough to lift my spirits. Still, this by no means is a diss towards the actual quality of the production. The gloomy atmosphere is well-executed, the graphics are sharp and expertly produced, and the cutscenes are indeed impressive.

This game has a standard length for a hidden object adventure, with a 3.5 hours main game and a 50-minutes bonus chapter. The bonus chapter has the player switching roles with a Dark Tracker agent, which justifies having to return to the same scenes from the main game. Mystery Trackers: The Secret of Watch Hill Collector’s Edition also includes a strategy guide, wallpapers, concept art, screensavers, soundtracks, achievements, collectibles, morphing objects, replayable hidden objects scenes, and replayable puzzles.

Mystery Trackers: The Secret of Watch Hill might be interesting for newcomers, but for long-time HOPA fans this is just another sub-par cookie-cutter mystery.