Danse Macabre: Crimson Cabaret Collector's Edition

Loved it. Highly recommend.

A definite winner, I've already bought the rest of the series.

So many wonderful features:
- Lovely locations and music.
- A forensics kit which allows you to analyse evidence.
- Voice acting top notch with charming accents.
- A suspects screen which keeps track of interactions with specific characters.
- A fast travel system plus a novel new location method - once done in an area, you are given an item which you hand to the carriage driver who takes you to a new location.
- The game distinguishes between interactions and flavour text so it's easy to see where puzzles etc are.
- Puzzles are challenging but fair.
- Bonus chapter uses the original location, opens up new areas inside it and you interact with characters you met during the main game. Very relevant bonus chapter which is refreshing.

All in all, a standout HOG, charming and interesting, and I actually have no criticisms at all, which is rare. Superb.

I usually love cuddling up with a nice hot coffee and playing big fish style adventure games because they're quick, simple and to the point. I love character and story driven games as well. The problem here is it started off that way, but after a few stops it very quickly turned into a puzzle game and just finding and sticking various objects in other various objects. I got so bored I started using the hint system to jump around, then i couldn't wait for it to be over.

Enjoyable game, graphics spark the imagination.

It's worth the time and money.

Pros
.Engaging, coherent story
.Lovely artwork/graphics/scenes
.Supporting music/sounds
.Four difficulty modes (including custom)
.Beautifully done mini-map with fast travel
.Lockable toolbar
.Indication when objects in correct position for possible use
.Intricate, challenging adventure play
.Variety of challenging hidden object scenes
.Variety of easy to challenging mini-puzzles
.Collectables (windmill cross)
.Morphing objects in hidden object scenes
.Bonus chapter
.Bonus content
.Strategy guide
.Average length with bonus chapter

Cons
.Atmosphere was rather bright for a murder mystery
.Smudgy artwork made recognising objects difficult to impossible at times in both the adventure play (ie a black moon-shaped object on the ground turned out to be a round lens stuck in the ground) and the hidden object scenes (ie still can't see the foot in the twelfth one)
.Adventure play was counter-intuitive at times, especially in the Elephant and Park chapters (ie put a rock in a bag on a branch to bring a nest down instead of using the ladder two feet away to climb up to the nest )

Final opinion (7/10):
Solid game with lots of bells and whistles. That said, I was disappointed it was a less suspenseful, more procedural game than the first.

Short version: 89%

Crimson Cabaret is the kind of hidden object game that does almost everything right, except for the amount of its hidden object scenes. The gripping crime story combined with an astounding visual style and fun adventure gameplay will easily keep you in your seat for quite a few hours.

Long version:

Danse Macabre 2: Crimson Cabaret combines the colourful world of the Parisian nightlife during the golden years of the vaudeville era with a classic serial murder mystery. The plot introduces quite high stakes as we try to uncover the tracks of a mysterious masked figure before the pile of bodies gets even bigger, but its main strength is the pacing. There is some padding and backtracking, sure, yet it still does an exceptional job introducing new suspects and uncovering a plethora of old secrets as we dig deeper.

Traditional point ‘n’ click has always been a suitable format for such investigation-centric crime stories, so Crimson Cabaret focuses mainly on these mechanics. This means that there is tangibly lower amount of conventional puzzles and hidden object scenes than in most similar games, but at least their quality is exceptional from the main story to the sizeable bonus content.