The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Nintendo DS) Review

The tale of Dr. Jekyll and his wealth of different potions, including one that causes the transformation into the gruesome Mr. Hyde, is such a complex and intriguing one that numerous books, TV shows and movies have been made based on the story. Joindots has jumped on-board the wagon and used the dark, twisted yarn as the basis of its stab at the Hidden Object genre for DS. In The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the date is Friday 13th August, 1886, and the primary setting is Soho, London, England, the streets barren and the early morning air heavy with fear after some tragic events have unfolded. Murder is the dish of the day, cold-blooded murder, with a wealthy man being the victim of the moment, something made even more shocking due to his irreproachable reputation.

The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde places you in the role of someone trying to get to the bottom of everything and find out who the culprit was, which leads to trudging through a plentiful supply of extremely dark, dank locations that all look extremely atmospheric. However, across the thirty different scenes, complete with appropriately melancholy soundtrack, there are numerous objects strewn across the background, some that stand out like a sore thumb, and others that sometimes cannot be seen in the slightest without random tapping all over the screen (something that is not penalised due to no running points total or timer system present).

As with other Hidden Object adventures, such as the excellent Vampire Moon: The Mystery of the Hidden Sun from City Interactive, the idea is that a list of objects will appear on the top screen and players must scour each location to tap on the correct item. In Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, though, some of the old problems that have been rectified in newer releases arise, namely being how the player is unable to see some objects due to poor scaling of imagery on the DS screens, nor is are there any preview bubbles present to show what oddly named objects look like. In addition, there are no time penalties for those that ‘tap and hope,’ and the actual articles required to be hunted down do not always tie in with the storyline in the slightest.

Finishing on a positive note, though, there are at least 30 extra mini-games to break up the 200 tasks in the main mode (such as unravelling riddles linked to potion creation, dressing a mannequin to match an image provided, or tracing points along a path to find the escape route and hiding place of the culprit). The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde may not be the best in the genre, but Joindots and OG International have a decent enough product to appeal to die-hard Hidden Object fans.