New Software To Be Reviewed Review

The very beginning screen of Magic Academy reminded me completely of Harry potter. I thought it looked very similar, and then the very next screen, I knew that it had been at least based off of the books. There is an old man that looks almost exactly like Dumbledore, beard and all, and the inside is fashioned the same way that his office looked like in the movie.

The main character is a girl named Annie, which was a little disappointing at first. I had gotten all into the “Harry Potter” mode, and then it was some girl, and her name wasn’t very wizard-inspiring. But anyway, I went through with the dialogue. I thought that it was an okay dialogue, but an added bonus was the “skip dialogue” button on the top right corner for those people who don’t want to bother listening to everything the old man has to say. Besides, his speech is a little old fashioned sounding to me…not unlike a certain headmaster I mentioned before.

The music is nice at first, kind of mysterious, but it soon gets tedious. I guess that you can’t hope for much more in these kinds of games, and for a hidden object game with all their music loops, it is actually not that bad. It has a little bit of change throughout, added ambience and different instruments, so it isn’t so monotonous that you just quit the game out of annoyance.

Once I got to the actual game, the first task was to gather together all the documents, sheets of paper, and scrolls that he (now known as Master Carridan) had lost. He has apparently lost his syllabus and wants you to find it. It’s surprising like a real teacher, they always seem to be recruiting kids to find the things that they have lost. But, then again, if you have the resources at your disposal, than you might as well use them, and he certainly did.

Something that I really don’t like about this game is that they give you a penalty for what thye call “random clicks”. I wasn’t even randomly clicking, I was just seeing if the objects I was clicking on were part of the item list I was supposed to be getting. I was a very annoyed because it wasn’t like I was clicking all over, and I had only clicked a few times (maybe four or five) without clicking on one of the scrolls I was supposed to be collecting. Also, the level is too easy for the amount of time given. It only took me about twenty seconds to find everything, and there were a fill two minutes and a half left when I was done.

The next goal is to find the articles brought by the master. This was the worst level in a hidden object game. All they game you was a little silhouette of the object, and you had to guess what it was. Although the objects were fairly simple, it was very annoying because you had to basically guess what it looked like. I also got to see what the penalty for random clicking was, and it was over 35 seconds! That was outrageous because they don’t give you much of a chance to not click too many times.

Now, right before my third challenge, I got to meet “Harry Potter”, although in the game his name is Melamori and looks very nerdy. The harry Potter theme was pretty neat at first, but by the third challenge, it is really getting annoying because they don’t stick true to the story. Lus, no one seems very sad that the main character’s sister had disappeared or died (in the dialogue), when they would be in real life. But this is just a video game after all. Melamori also talks like he was born a hundred and fifty years ago too. Not at all like the real Harry Potter.

The only hard level so far was the mirror mode, and I lost. I had almost no time left, and I had just found the second to last clue, and then the time ran out. It said that I had lost a level, and to try again, but it made me start all over from the beginning. I decided I might as well give it one last shot, and so I redid everything that I had done before and finally finished the mirror challenge. Luckily for me, everything was still in the same spot so it was easy to get back where I had left off. The most confusing part of the mirror challenge, is that there are two mice (computer mice hands) on each screen. I kept glancing back and forth, and felt like I was going to get a headache or something.

It turned out that all I had missed was the candle in the candleholder, so that wasn’t all too bad. I was a little upset that that was all I missed, but I guess it wasn’t all that bad. The goal was to get rid of all the things that were there before she had come, and now I was able to find the things that were hers (the next hidden object challenge). Again, I was penalized for random clicks and almost lost, but in the end I got what I was looking for, and was done with that challenge. On to the next!

Professor Morrows of the alchemy (potions class!) department is just like Snape in persona, if not in appearance. He has blonde hair and is very mean. He has no time for Annie and isn’t very helpful. He is just like a really bad knockoff of the real thing. And he is very pretentious too.

Mr. Morrows made Annie clean up his lab. It was the worse of the two silhouette challenges, because this one consisted mostly of shapeless, lumpy objects that didn’t have any resemblance to them at all. At least I managed to get through this one. Hopefully the next one will be a true traditional “find the list of things” challenge.
The other one was sort of like that, so I wasn’t too disappointed. All I had to do was find all the flasks and test tubes in the room, which wasn’t all that bad at all. I found them pretty easily and moved on to the next task.

Next I was sent off to see librarian Tua. Now, the thing that bothers me is that no one really cares what happened to Annie’s sister Irene. They seem not to have any kind of concern, and instead only car if Annie helps them out with their chores and things. It is a very common reaction in this game to say that you are too busy to help find a missing kid. Strange.

Anyway, my next goal was to catch all of the escaped mice. Most of these mice were large enough to be rats, or even small cats, so they were easy to find. No problem here, so I’m moving on to the next. H, there was one that was a bit difficult. It was a very fat off-white rat sitting on an off-white book page. So the only way I found him was I was lucky enough to click there, because I thought I saw a pair of eyes!

My next goal was to pick up the keys scattered across the library. There were ten of them as usual, and in very similar places to where the mice had been located. This was breeze, because they weren’t in very original places, although there was one I found blending in with the patterned rug.

My next goal was, well the trial game was over. I had gotten plenty of it to see exactly what the game was like. I had forgotten that it was a trial version because it was so long, but it did give you a good feel for the actual game. The graphics were nice, and they reminded me a lot of one of my favorite novels, but it was upsetting how similar, but then again un-similar to the characters of the book. I would have enjoyed it more if they had not tried so hard to make it just like the books.

There were a few things in this game that I really hated. One of them was that there were no points. There really was no incentive to find the object quickly because you had plenty of time (unless you apparently went a little click-happy that is). There were no hints, and I take back what I said about the music earlier, it just gets worse and worse to the point where you really want to turn your headphones off, or maybe just give up the game after all.

The $20 price on their website is, well, absurd for this game. I could buy the Sims 2 or an expansion pack brand new for that price, and Magic Academy isn’t even remotely as good. I think that the trial version is worth playing in the end if you are really bored. The music is a bit hypnotizing, and it does pass a few moments I would have spend playing another game anyway.