Christmas Stories: The Gift of the Magi Collector's Edition

Christmas is still a pretty exciting period, especially now that it spread all over the world and everyone is celebrating the winter holidays together. On top of that, there are all sorts of movies and video games to help people get in the right mood, although they are usually designed for casual audiences, so the quality level is quite low most of the time.

Christmas Stories: The Gift of the Magi is a hidden object adventure game that challenges you to see a different side of the winter holidays, one that is not quite as jolly. However, don’t expect too many differences when it comes to the gameplay mechanics, because they are the same you might have experienced in many other HOPAs on the market.

As for the story, it all starts when the main character’s sister is taken away by the evil Christmas spirit after she does a bad deed. Hence, your role as her brother is to go out there and rescue her, although it’s not as easy as that. In order to be able to retrieve your sister, you must perform as many good deeds as you can and demonstrate that you care about others.

Most of the puzzles require you to find specific objects by examining each scene, and sometimes these items come in multiple pieces. It gets repetitive and annoying after a while, but at least there’s the occasional interactive puzzle you have to solve, as well as cutscenes that take your mind off things. On the other hand, the mechanics fail to present you with anything new, so don’t expect to be impressed in this regard.

As for the graphics, the artists certainly did a good job when it comes to level design and the Christmas atmosphere that catches you in its spell from the first few minutes of gameplay. Every scene is incredibly detailed and overflowing with nice colors, and the same can be said about the characters you meet along the way. Obviously, the music is in tune with the season as well.

In the end, there’s nothing truly exciting about Christmas Stories: The Gift of the Magi, but it has all the right ingredients to keep you engaged for a while. Moreover, it can easily get you in the right mood for Christmas.

NOTE: This is a downloader for the game. Once run, the application will automatically download and install the game on your computer.

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