With the Xbox Live Arcade service rapidly approaching the 150 million download mark and a typical new arcade game reaching 350,000 downloads in its first month of release, it is perhaps not surprising that the service is getting flooded with every game genre you could possibly imagine in the search for some easy money. Tik Games, with their previous arcade experience (“Texas Hold em” and “Domino Master”) have stepped forward with this week’s offering “Interpol: The Trail of Dr Chaos” which is the first of its genre type for the arcade service.
I would describe the game as a “Find Wally” or “quick tea break puzzle” kind of game: the object of the game is to closely examine a static image with a special magnifying glass looking for objects or clues listed at the top of the screen. When you find an object, it gets removed from the picture and you are awarded points. If you find all the objects within the specified time limit, you then proceed to the next level. To help you along the way, a number of clues and hints are available if you need them.
Unfortunately, Tik Games have failed to adapt this game properly with adequate presentation so the result is a frustrating gaming experience which should be avoided especially when you can find better versions for half the price on the PC.
Whats wrong with the game?
(1) Picture quality
The whole game structure is based around the image so why are the images so average? It’s pretty hard to see everything on the image even with a magnifying glass!
(2) Zooming
The magnification area available is too small: why can’t the player alter the size of the magnification area or zoom into different areas of the map like, for example, the top right area of the image? There are plenty of available controller buttons this feature could have been assigned to! I found this particularly frustrating considering the majority of the objects you are required to find are half hidden behind other objects!
(3) What the Hell am I looking for anyway?
I may not be the most intelligent person around but Tik games obviously decided that in order to play this game you needed to be both American and incredibly intelligent in order to play this game! What the hell is a “blimp” , a “Vin Vang” and a “mining pan” to name just a few? Pass the “sour dough” please, is that baking powder and what’s it got to do with convicts and “Dr Chaos”? My personal favourite was “Infinity” which I eventually discovered (through using the hint function) was the infinity mathematical SYMBOL! Please call it a “symbol” then. Sometimes you find yourself looking for an object when the meant the actual word spelling itself! (E.g. radio)
(4) Difficulty Settings
There aren’t any at all: you get thrown in at the deep end here. No beginners image in this game and, due to the structure of the game, if you fail to find all the objects in all 3 of the level maps within 30 minutes then you need to start again from the beginning with a different list of objects to find.
A quick look at the leaderboards on Xbox Live show that there are actually people out there who managed to finish the game. However, they probably only managed to complete the game because they all own 80” HD TVs which made looking for these objects a bit easier. Perhaps they used the co-op feature so they had 2 pairs of squinted eyes instead of one!
At the end of the day, this is a poorly presented and overpriced piece of software that fails miserably to persuade anyone to put down their PC mouses and play these simple puzzle games on their TV’s instead. Download a cheaper and better version of this genre on your PC.
Nometet.com says: 
