The thing about hidden item games is that they aren’t all that exciting. Staring at a lifeless image for hours on end just doesn’t appeal to me all that much. Luckily, this game has more to it than that. The Mystery of the Crystal Portal, from G5 Entertainment, adds a little bit of puzzle solving to help break things up and it works, I just wish they had included more puzzles. In the end it’s still just a hidden item game that makes you find items in a particular order instead of just at random and has too few puzzles interspersed to switch things up.

They did take a great deal of time it seems in crafting the environments and also did a very good job on the interface itself. The story goes that your father was a noted archaeologist and has been searching for proof that a Crystal Portal exists. He follows the clues through ancient cultures until he disappears, presumably having found the Portal and gained control over time. You, of course, being the dutiful granddaughter, must find out what happened to him.

You do this by traveling the world picking up pieces of the puzzle by solving the hidden item levels. While the environments are expertly crafted, the game plays out in widescreen which means if you’re television isn’t all that large or a standard 4:3 it won’t be as large as it could be. To keep you from squinting so hard you pop a blood vessel, they’ve included a handy zoom function. Even then, at times, you’ll be squinting probably.

Overall The Mystery of the Crystal Portal would make a great game for one of those lazy Sunday summer afternoons where it’s too hot to go outside and you’re too lazy to fire up the hardcore FPS. The gameplay isn’t all that varied but the environments are extremely well done, the sounds are equally good and it does prove to be entertaining.

I did not play this on my PSP because, well, like I said, it was small enough on the PS3 with my a 21-inch screen. I would have simply tossed the game aside I think. Some of you might enjoy it on that platform (it’s also available on the iPhone).