The Curio Society: New Order Collector's Edition

People have always feared secret societies that control everything from the shadows, but it would seem like they are either very good at hiding themselves, or very fictional. Granted, there are some examples of what one may call exclusive clubs, but they are hardly trying to rule the world. Still, such ideas make for very engaging books and films, not to mention video games.

The Curio Society: New Order is a hidden object adventure game in which you play the role of someone within a secret society. Granted, they are actually trying to help the world rather than hurt it, but it’s still a pretty well-guarded secret. As for the gameplay, everything is more or less the same as in every other HOPA out there, except that the puzzles are quite different every time.

The story starts when someone steals a powerful artifact from the Curio Society, which prompts a special mission to find the object and bring it back. This item has the power to eliminate all kinds of emotion from the world, thus leaving everyone as empty and as boring as a lifeless husk. You must return the artifact before the one who stole it gets to make use of its powers, and it’s quite a long journey.

Most of your time is spent jumping from scene to scene and trying to spot useful objects in the environment, objects that can be used to unlock doors or perform various other such actions. Some items can be disassembled or combined in order to obtain something else, which prompts yet more searches after that. It can get repetitive, but that’s the case with most games in the genre anyway.

Thankfully, at least you get plenty of wonderful landscapes to look at throughout the adventure, both indoors and outdoors. You can tell that a fair amount of work went into the environments, especially since the level of detail is so high. Granted, the cutscene animations are as disappointing as ever, but that shouldn’t affect the overall experience very much.

All things considered, The Curio Society: New Order is quite able to keep you engaged for a few hours, especially if you are a fan of the genre. On the other hand, there’s nothing very original about it, so it probably won’t be a memorable adventure.

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