February 27th, 2008 by PCG

Game Review: Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia

Throw some prawns on the barbie, time to leave the cable cars of San Francisco behind and head for a hum dinger of a trip with the Big City Adventure family in the new hidden object game Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia. Discover well-known sites like Hyde Park, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbor Bridge, and Royal Botanical Gardens. Venture beyond the beautiful and famous buildings to Circular Quay, the Domain, markets, and museums. Count on re-experiencing the fun of traveling by the bay in a new setting with a few new features.

Though you'll revisit a couple of the 25 places, you'll always receive a new postcard with facts about Sydney and its abundant past. The ability to review past locations adds a welcome improvement. Click on a memento from a completed level to see the postcard with related facts. Sometimes you just want to play the game and not learn about every destination. Now you can go back and read them when you're in the mood.

As expected of a hidden object game, your goal is to track down the items that appear in the inventory of things to find in the current location to collect a momento and move on to the next desination. Timed mode adds the pressure of finding the items before the clock runs out.

After spying all the hidden items among kangaroos, boomerangs, and wide brimmed hats, it's mini-game time. Three mini-games from San Francisco follow the family to Sydney where they discover three more. The mini-game returnees are Match the Groups, a match three game that calls for making matches on every tile until they all disappear; Jigsaw Puzzle, put together all the pieces in their rightful places; and Memory Game, find the pairs until each one finds its mate. Many match three games may exist, but the images move as the tiles fall for a great effect...

At last a game where I can share my travel photos with all. For someone who has had the opportunity to visit Sydney on more than one occasion, Big City Adventure, Sydney, Australia hidden object game is a wonderful trip down under.

Sydney is one of the major cities of the world and for the tourist, a safe and fabulous place where you can visit iconic places, have breathtaking views and see some unique Australian animals, all within walking distance to the best shopping in Sydney...

Just when I was beginning to wonder if our favorite game designers had gone on strike with the Writer’s Guild, a whole swarm of new games have been released. Look for several reviews from me over the next few days. I downloaded and played the 1-hour demo of Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia from Big Fish Games this morning. This is a Big Fish Exclusive for the time being, so you’ll have to go to them if you want to play.

The gameplay will be familiar to anyone who has played the other Big City Adventure games. You’re on a trip with family, this time to Sydney, Australia. While there you’ll visit various landmarks and interesting places, each of which just happen to have hidden objects in need of finding. Not much plot, but that’s not why we play, is it?

The artwork is beautifully drawn and brightly colored, with hidden objects well-defined, though cleverly camoflaged in come cases. I’ve developed a pattern of rushing through the easy-to-find object on each screen, skipping over more elusive items. Then I do a grid-by-grid search for the one or two that didn’t pop out at me. Some in this game were quite artfully hidden, for instance: a ginger root placed right next to an almost identical coral in an underwater scene.

Coins with various designs are hidden in each screen, usually three to a round. These are your hints and helps. They’re usually pretty easy to find, though one or two eluded me throughout the hour that I played. Collect all of them that you can find, not because you’ll use them up but because it’s part of the challenge...

The Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia game is actually the sequel of another famous Big City Adventure game about San Francisco. The story tells about a family composing of 6 members, traveling to some of Sydney’s most famous locations in search of well… treasure and adventure. Honestly, I’m not really sure about the treasure stuff since I just read that from the marketing text of this game and the actual game doesn’t really imply any treasure hunting of any kind, however, I’m absolutely sure about the adventure part since I had a really great gaming adventure from this one.

The main objective of the game is to collect all 75 mementos coming from various places in Sydney. This may be the “treasure hunting” part of the game, but as I said earlier, I’m not quite sure. This souvenir-finding revolves around 26 unique locations wherein you’ll be dealing with 76 levels of object-finding fun. And in between, the game also features quite a number of exciting mini games enough to make a separate casual game on its own...

Big City Adventure: Sydney, Australia is the latest word to find articles on the game, in all aspects of a good performance. Life in San Francisco waiting for your travel, risky in this city, across all the famous places attractions, treasures and valuable items search.

Softer tone to the game show beautifully delicate images. 20 scenes rich environment, both drawn cartoon-style images, including pictures of realism displayed this exotic city's diverse landscape.

Soothing, beautiful background music in different scenes interludes, with rich audio and sounds of the game's sharp, clean right tone, so that the whole game is set in a relaxed atmosphere...