Off the Record: The Italian Affair Collector's Edition

[h1]I played on the hardest difficulty; game length seems good[/h1] A lot of the problem with games like these is how long it takes for people to finish. It is going to be different for everyone, more so when there are different difficulties to choose from. All I can say is I played on the hardest setting and finished the base game and the bonus chapter at around 7 hours, and that's including a bit of afk time. Don't let the lack of steam achievements fool you. The game has its own set of in-game achievements and they are quite demanding. One asks you to find ten objects in ten seconds, and there are multiple types of collectables to pick up along the way. In fact the collectables are some of the hardest to figure out without a guide. The reason for this is the randomness of it - while the fox statues are one per screen, none of the others are. I think the bonus chapter only has morphing objects in addition to the statues, but I never finished these collections, even though I got close... missing only one or two from each of the types. There are the fox statues, letters (in the form of a rolled up bit of paper), letters of the alphabet, and the morphing objects. Having mentioned all that, the story itself follows on loosely from a previous game. This one takes the form of a love triangle, and the 'whodunnit' part isn't too hard to guess after a bit. The art is gorgeous, hidden object searches are clear and crisp, the minigames and puzzles are enjoyable. Whether they are too easy or not depends on you - figuring out what to do with items depends on how liberal you want to be with hitting the hint button. It still has that awful weird facial animation that most all hidden object games come with - janky stuff that is horrible to look at. If you don't mind that though then you might find this game to be alright. But I still recommend you wait for a sale.