Secret Files 3 – Review

Introduction and Gameplay

Secret Files 3 is modern point and click adventure game that follows the story of a young girl named Nina and her future husband Max. Nina and Max are getting ready to have a wedding and marry,  at the start of the game Max gets arrested and accused of terrorism by the Berlin police and now Nina has to figure out what’s going on. The player takes control of Nina right after this event and the actual game begins.

However, before these events start happening you play through a Egyptian scenario as a tutorial level to the game. The tutorial basically teaches you different mechanics of the gameplay such as combining objects together in your inventory, how to navigate the scene, how to look for clues and just simply to understand how the game works overall. The tutorial level does a fantastic job at introducing a new player to understanding how the flow of Secret Files 3 works.

Secret Files 3 is filled with puzzles to solve, clues to find  a lot of trial and error. The flow of the game is simple, you are introduced to a certain scenario and you have to look for clues in order to figure out what to do next. You can interact with different items in the scene just by clicking on them, sometimes the character may say that they cannot use that object or they need something else in order to use it. The interact-able objects can be a range of different things, whether it be fire that is in the environment, or a piece of cloth that you find on the floor.

The player may bring up a small menu simply by dragging your mouse points toward the bottom of your screen. This is where you have access to your items in the inventory, point of interest locator, quest logs and the main menu access. The point of interest locator is the button you will be using throughout the  majority of your adventuring in Secret Files 3. It shows the player all of the inter-actable objects in the scene, whether it be a painting on the wall that Nina can take a look at, or a huge nail that is stuck in a wall can be taken out and be put in your inventory for later use. If you wish to take a breather for a moment, you may do so simply by accessing the main menu and saving your game. The player may save or load the game at any given time.

In one of the scenarios I had to burn down a huge tapestry on a wall, and in order for me to do that I had to find cloth and put it on fire to burn away the tapestry so I can pass through a secret passage through the window. In order for me to get through the window I had to figure out how to climb the statue, once Nina got on top of the statue, my next step was play a timing mini-game where I had to properly off-balance the statue to the right side to be able to reach the window and make my escape.

The timing mini-game felt clunky and annoying for the most part and it took a while to figure out how it exactly worked. However, despite the clunky timing gameplay challenges Secret Files 3 does a excellent job of a point and click adventure just by being  so simple. Once the player gets used to the overall flow of the game, he or she will have start having a lot of fun trying to figure things out and try to move on to the next scenario as soon as possible to see the story unfold before their very eyes.

The Art Style and Overall Verdict

Secret Files 3 has an awesome art style, the colors are vibrant and fit really well together. Everything looks crisp and has a nice to look at, the in-game cinematics are well done too with the exception of lip-syncing 0ther than that I have no complaints at all regarding the look of this game. As you can tell by the screenshots posted in this review, the overall set pieces of the scenes stand out really great. There are times when I actually enjoy looking at the scene in the game for a few minutes just to see how all of the objects, environment and particle effects pop out.

Secret Files 3 is a decent adventure game that will last you about 8-9 hours depending on your level of thinking and how much you can tolerate annoying timing mechanics. Other than that it’s a pretty solid game, I would totally recommend it for people who have played the past games in this series, or if you’re just in a mood for some point and clicking action and enjoy puzzle games.

This game reviewed on PC.