Golden Trails: The New Western Rush™

    Version: Full

Pros:  1° One of the most (or _the_ most) addictive hidden object games ever, mostly due to trophy system and the ability to actually show trophies online.

2° Fantastic artwork! Everything is beautiful and objects are hidden just right (easier than in RoR and that's good).

3° The soundtrack fits the setting perfectly (it's got a stereotyped 'hello to Morricone', too) and is even worth listening to outside of the game, my personal favourite is the Old Saddle theme.

4° Firstly i played a version 1.0.something, with too many textual errors, later i got v1.1.4 from GH and it was quite satisfying to see errors fixed (even towns renamed) and cool extras added.

5° This game's got a steam train (i LOVE steam trains), and the 'Fatal eggs' inside the mine, that's cool

Cons:  1° Some trophies are impossible to achieve in Adventure mode (20+ precise and timed clicks), i think because counter resets between levels. It should not reset, and i believe in RoR id did not (if i made 10 precise clicks in one location and 10 in the very following one, i still was able to get the 20 good clicks trophy).

2° I wouldn't mind to have a female protagonist in this game. After all, what am i, a transie? I believe it's mostly girls who play casual games and a girl might feel weird when her character says 'woo-hoo, what a pretty Mary'. (There most likely couldn't be a female sheriff in the Wild West, but c'mon who cares (and it's not a historical educational game), there may be other factual errors and anachronisms (what's the game year at all?) as well so what, they're ok when and if they're for FUN).

But there's something else that worries me about the plot, and that's…

3° in this game the protagonist is a lawman, and that's wrong. I'll have to explain why. Pls see my next post.

4° Names of Parker and Taylor are practically 'the same' (both mean professions, two syllables with '-er', even a Smith instead of one of them would do better) and, as there's no way to re-read the previous episodes in the game, when playing for the first time i instantly forgot who's who and felt unsure at some point what's at all happening. We can't expect a casual player to play, even a detective story, with a notepad, but something in the game interface should act as such notepad, instead.

Yet, there're not only people of English origin in the West. How about an italian villain in the sequel, with that twisted moustache ya know?

5° Indians are in India, those in the game are Native Americans, we Europeans have learnt that too

6° Moneybags are hidden behind wallstones twice (mill basement/mansion), what's the repetition for and where's the fresh ideas?

7° Walkthroughs (pictures in Extras with hidden objects highlighted in circles) are useless because there's many more objects on each level than shown on these pictures, and though the set of objects seems constant for a player account, it will randomly change if a new player account is created. There are less objects to find on a level in Adventure mode than in the same location in Unlimited mode, but some objects _don't_ appear in Unlimited while they may appear tasked to find in Adventure (eg for Sunnyvale Bank, a metal bowl in front of a painting (upper right) and a piece of jewelry in front of the electric fan (middle left)). Given all that, the 'walkthroughs' really need to be improved or, dismissed.

And any screenshots with visible trophies spoil the 'stolen' items

Comment: 

    Version: Demo

Pros: 

Cons:  (cant get the forum to work right in with a proxy, only the rate form works)

Comment:  Maybe it's just me, but there's a thing about this story that worries me. I wrote above that the main game's character shouldn't be a lawman and promised to say why.

BECAUSE THE EVIDENCE FOUND BY JACK IS BY NO MEANS SUFFICIENT TO PUT PEOPLE BEHIND BARS.

You see, in many of such games we do seek evidence which is enough to make us guess and suspect someone, establish our suspicions, blame the guilty one — and then the guilty one CONFESSES and the police (some _abstract_ police) takes him to jail. In real life (which most of us only know from movies), though, it's much, much harder to PROOF someone's guilt. For Jack the Guy-next-door all decisions are easier but for Jack the Sheriff it takes more than a guess, more than his personal confidence to solve the case, he's got the responsibility and the authority to actually change people's lives! And let's listen to himself: "I think Cowboy Joe is afraid of something. He left Sunnyvale* despite just giving someone a written assignment. It means he has something to do with the bank robbery. Now i have a good reason to arrest him". Oh c'mon boss, now that's a _good_ reason? Personally i was upset to see that happening, i feel more comfortable in a world (a game world AND the real one) where no one can be found guilty with such lame arguments. Let's look — arguments ever found by Hercule Poirot, Ms Marple, even Sherlock Holmes (yes, none of them are lawmen) may also seem ridiculous by a real police detective and a crime scene investigator. That's why Agatha Cristie always made villains confess and admit their crimes. But no one confesses in GT and they still go to prison.

That's why, if a sequel is ever issued (and it should be — where 'a game' easily goes unnoticed, 'the series of games' always draws attention), i'd suggest to find another hero (maybe that's where a female investigator will do, as a lack of such is also what i'm whinig about. Say, Jack is away for a vacation or even kidnapped, and his spouse-to-be pretty Mary takes it over).

* A picture of Charlotte in the tent proves that was Joe in there? If there are only adults reading i can explain what really had happened. Charlie's a determined person, she needed to collect the money for Joe's ranch, so she met other men (the banker, the Rifleman, N.B. …) in that tent, and near the mine too (thus she had the map). She would usually take one of Joe's horses in secret to get there. The horses were not stolen on the robbery night — Charlie forgot to secure the stable's door and the horses followed the well-known road by themselves.
Eventually Joe suspected that and went there after her, but she saw him first and fooled him again, and offered another plan to kidnap her rich lover for ransom — that's what the sacks were for.

(Mary, who kept a picture of Charlotte next to the Bible, was neither too innocent — why would the former sheriff leave keys at her place?)

Oh and that's so logical, to burn a paper map and then to carve the same map in stone along the way. Lol. I was laughing at the story mostly, but bitterly or even didn't laugh at all when people got arrested.