Is that a flashlight in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?
As with any adventure of this type, Secret Files 2 involves exploring every inch of the environment, picking up items, combining them to solve inventory puzzles and interacting with numerous characters along the way in order to piece the story together. The only buttons you need to press are those on your mouse; it’s simple, yet effective adventuring. Secret Files 2 sports an identical interface to the previous game, which is one which of the most user friendly and clean interfaces that I’ve used in any point and click videogame .Click on the magnifying glass in the bottom right of the screen and smaller magnifiers appear over all of the hotspots in that area..As you hover over an item, you’ll see a number of different options displayed on or around the mouse icon. If you can interact with the object you’ll see a hand and the left hand button of the mouse icon is illuminated. If it’s not an object you can interact with, you’ll see an eye and an right hand mouse button will illuminate. These icons basically tell you exactly what to press without the trial and error method of clicking on ever single interesting object that catches your eye. It all blends together superbly to ensure that you won’t spend hours wasting time combining objects and searching every nook and cranny. While hardcore adventurers may prefer to slog through the game without the extra help, the clean interface eliminates the need to search every crevice and pixel to find the smallest of clues.
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Click for larger imageThe inventory bar runs across the bottom of the screen with all items clearly and cleanly labeled. By right clicking on them you’ll hear a description that often holds a clue as to the object's purpose. Secret Files 2 looks as though it will be full to the brim with inventory puzzles and already, in four hours of gameplay, I’ve used the inventory bar often to drag items onto other items to see if they can be combined to create new objects.