Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos

A trail which seems to have involved leaving a load of junk scattered around some famous landmarks!

If you were to visit MSN games, for example, and look down the list of available games you would find a lot of these “hidden item” type games. They are even making their way onto the DS, allowing you to hunt through quite detailed junk on a tiny screen. But for now, this is the first (of many, I fear) to hit the Xbox Live Arcade, grab your badge and gun magnifying glass and get yourself on the Trail of Dr Chaos.

If you’ve never played these type of games before let me explain the premise. You are presented with a scene – in this case, famous landmarks from around the globe – which has been filled with junk, and various cunningly hidden bits and bobs. You are given a list of items to find. You find the items and move onto the next area. Simple.

The first thing I will say is that some of the items are very well hidden, and often quite small. The game does come with a magnify function which enables you to zoom in on the area your cursor is hovering over which is useful when you’re finding things like USB sticks. The one thing I would say is that if you’re playing this game on a small, non HD, television things could get very tricky. It’s quite hard to make out what some of the objects are even when you’re playing on a large HD screen.

I also don’t know who wrote the item lists, but I spent ages looking for a “Bobbie Helmet” before I realised I was after a policeman’s helmet. Nothing screams “we wrote this in the US” more than calling policemen “bobbies”. You will occasionally come across lists asking you to find both a torch and flashlight. Again, you have to slip into American mode and realise that the flashlight means torch and the torch usually refers to a flaming torch-type item. Once you’ve overcome the language problems the game is quite playable.

It’s also annoying. You can spend ages staring a scene looking for an item but unable to find it. Using the hint function lets you choose an item and shows you where it is on the screen. You will often find that you’ve either been staring at the exact portion of the screen, or that the item’s image is not quite what you’d expect the item to look for.

Interpol is, predominantly, a single player experience. There is a multiplayer mode but you have to wonder why. It seems to have been shoe-horned into the game because it’s on Xbox Live are there should be Interpol Xbox Live Parties or something. There’s no point to it. Up to 4 magnified areas of the screen will make the game even more annoying than it can be at it’s most irritating.

Should you choose to replay an area you will find that you are presented with a different list of items. You will also find that the items on the scene are the same as on your original playthorugh. This could, in theory, allow you to dazzle your friends with your Rainman-like skills of item location. It could also scare your friends that you’ve spent that much time on this game.

The one major problem with the game is that, exotic locale or not, each area is the same. You will come across bonus levels where you’re asked to find 8 of the same thing – I’ve had 8 birds, flags and agents so far. These are a little bit more fun to play than the main stages because they’re a little bit different. Having said that, the game often chooses the darkest parts of the scenes to hide things in which often means without using hints or crazy clicking everywhere techniques you’re stumped.


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3 responses to “Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos”

  1. Chris avatar
    Chris

    My mum loves this kind of game. Dont think she’s gunna buy a 360 to play it on mind. Who do they think will be buying these games when they are avalibe for free online? A massive mismatch of game and machine, a collection of these ‘find the item games’ on the DS would sell shat-loads.

  2. Jake avatar

    Chris, they are hitting the DS already – I have seen a couple on import already and one of those is being localised for UK release at end of Jan I think.

  3. Lordstar avatar
    Lordstar

    When i first saw this i thought Interpol had a new album out lol.

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