Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9 out of 10

Snark Busters: High Society is a hidden object finding puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS3. The game initially launched for the P.C. in May 2012 with an iOS version arriving in November 2012 before making its way onto PS3 in November 2014.

The story revolves around the lead character Elizabeth Hughes, a world famous photographer, who announces her engagement to a gardener called Nicolas Fortright, but has her happiness cut short by Duchess Daffington who accuses Nicolas of having stolen a precious family heirloom; prompting Elizabeth to set out in an attempt to prove her fiancées’ innocence during her own investigation.

The gameplay purely involves finding all of the objects situated within a scene that are contained within individual groups of five pictures that must be found in order for the player to continue on their journey, such as pipes, screws, garden ornaments, apples and the components of a lantern as important discoveries usually provide a puzzle to complete or leads to a further trail to investigate.

The mixture of gameplay elements between earning an important item or accessing a new area to explore by finding all of the objects within multiple sets of individual groups with five objects per group is an excellent design choice as it provides the gameplay with more interesting elements as it places a focus on the level of importance of not just finding the objects, but also figuring out the puzzles. The puzzles include having to move a set of objects to the bottom, while rotating the opposite set of objects to the top, although there are spaces in both rows resulting in it not being as straight forward as may be initially believed, while there are a number of occasions in which players must progress onto another area by collecting the items to complete a group of hidden objects only to find the hidden object required for another group of objects to then backtrack to that location and complete another group of hidden objects to set off a potential chain reaction of opening up new areas.

The environment design is certainly imaginative as it has a steampunk styling to the settings with hover cars, floating blimps, hot air balloons and even a floating palace making for a magical and surreal world that places players in a mindset that anything is possible around each corner.

 

The character design has a great variation with the lead character being an adventurous photographer turned investigator in this important situation, Elizabeth’s fiancé Nicolas, a Duchess, the mysterious Snark creature and even ghosts playing a part in the story with all of the characters genuinely standing out from one another.

The game supports DualShock 3 and PlayStation Move controllers with the DualShock 3 control scheme having the feeling of a point and click adventure with the left analogue stick and d-pad taking the place of a mouse or touch screen in regards to moving around the surroundings and navigating the inventory of items with the right analogue stick used for a slower cursor movement, while pressing X allows the selection a path or an item; pressing O allows the player to leave a puzzle or to take a step back from an area, pressing triangle to select a hint or skip, pressing R1 or L1 to use the right or left inventory item respectively; pressing select to turn off legends and pressing start to display the pause menu.

The PlayStation Move control scheme is almost identical to the DualShock 3 controller, while the only differences include pressing select followed by the move button to calibrate the PlayStation Move with the PlayStation Eye camera, pressing the move button as an alternative to pressing X when selecting a path or an item and certainly the biggest difference is changing the direction the player is pointing the PlayStation Move controller by tilting it upwards, downwards or to the left or right to look around the surrounding environments. There is a subtle implementation of vibration from the DualShock 3 or PlayStation Move controller when successfully completing a puzzle.

Graphically, Snark Busters: High Society possesses some beautiful and artistic visions of a steampunk inspired world which certainly delivers a quality of detail that is beyond what might be believed possible for a game within the hidden object genre with stunning details such as moving fog, cloud formations, birds and dogs, leaves falling from trees, hot air balloons and blimps moving along the sky and a group of bubbles that appear across the screen when players have been incorrect on too many consecutive times, amongst other layers of graphical quality which collectively makes the game look better than previous games within the hidden object finding genre.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, options and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left and right analogue sticks, directional pad and face buttons. The background of the menu screens sets the tone for the game as they revolve around the steampunk setting of the game.

The voice-over cast provides consistent and exceptional voice-overs in each of their roles with a cast consisting of Bonnie Gordon who provides the voice-over for Elizabeth Hughes who previously voiced Frunetti Renzuka, Misery and Fairy Godmother in Guided Fate Paradox and Comit, Chronos and Pluto in Demon Gaze. Jason Preston, who is known for voice-overs in Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns as well as theatre and comedy productions, Jennifer Wydra, an experienced voice-over artist, who voiced Rhapsody in Heroes of Newerth and Aileen Lonie who records voice-overs for radio as well as videogames all also appear. The ambient sound effects include birds tweeting, trickling water from fountains and more besides which combines in perfect harmony with intriguing light, acoustic music.

The trophy list includes 12 trophies with 7 bronze, 4 silver and 1 gold trophy. Almost all of the trophies are missable but are still easy enough to expect to earn the majority of the trophies naturally by progressing through the game, such as the Sleight of Hand bronze trophy for finding all of the items in the daisy in sequence without missing any and the Need For Speed bronze trophy for completing any mini-game in 30 seconds or less, while the hardest trophies include the Worthy of Admiration bronze trophy for completing the game without using any hints; the Lawful Player bronze trophy for completing the game without being punished for random clicks and the Triumph of Justice gold trophy for completing the entire game on advanced difficulty. It is estimated that depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take between 3 to 5 hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are two difficulty levels including regular and expert mode with the major differences between the two revolving around the hint button recharging quicker in the regular mode in comparison to the expert mode, while interactive zones are highlighted in the regular mode but are not in the expert mode, therefore regular mode provides assistance to anyone that is finding the puzzles and hidden objects hard to figure out, while expert mode is for the most confident of puzzle and hidden object finding purists.

There are no multiplayer components or online leaderboards, which is surprising as there is certainly scope for split-screen competitive multiplayer or pass the controller multiplayer for two players to compete to find all of the hidden items within a level in a quicker time than the player they are competing against, while there could have been online leaderboards for completing each set of hidden objects the fastest and the quickest times for completing the game.

The replayability mostly stems from the story unfolding with every puzzle and hidden object searched for successfully unravel to see the result of which item or area received for recovering the group of hidden objects and placing them in their appropriate position or solving a puzzle to progress closer to the finale and which certainly makes for an entertaining experiment to play through a second or third time.

Overall, if you are a fan of games within the hidden object, puzzle or adventure genres, then Snark Busters: High Society is just as an enjoyable game to play as Alawar Entertainment’s range of hidden object, puzzling adventure games which is certainly recommended for those who appreciate a combination of those genres.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Snark Busters: High Society
• Developer: Alawar Stargaze
• Publisher: Alawar Entertainment
• System: PS3
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: No
• Cross-Play: No
• Players: 1
• Hard Drive Space Required: 934MB