Rather nice Matching 3 game with an ancient Japan setting. Story is simple, you have to help geisha and samurai with rebuilding a destroyed village and protecting its citizens. Visual are nicely colorful and music sets the right relaxing atmosphere.
There are 100 levels in total, nicely varied and with different shapes. You can play in three different styles - classic swap, chain and pop. To win the level you have to collect the acquired number of items, when playing in challenge mode you have to make it in a set number of steps. To make it harder there are a lot of obstacles to break through like boxes, stones, chains or ice. Luckily you have at your disposal four kinds of power ups that can help you with a stalemate. You can also shuffle the board and even rotate it, which proved to be pretty helpful.

My only complaint goes to the "Complete 200 levels!" achievement, as it's tedious to obtain. You have to play through the whole game again… the only change is that you can select a different playing style. I have come back for the achievement after 5 years, so it wasn't that bad, but doing it right after the first playthrough must be tiring. Otherwise it's a pretty and very relaxing game.

Finally a closure to the Secret Order series or I at least hope so. XD

Standard hidden object game with nice visuals and story full of loopholes. Puzzles were nice and of good difficulty, just the hidden object scenes were lacking as they were mostly consisting of collecting items by shapes and not standard searching by names, which I missed to be honest.
Good for killing some time.

Rather short hidden object game with a darker visuals and almost horror story - ship that disappeared many years ago returns mysteriously back to the port, but without any signs of the crew or the cargo. During our investigation we are gonna uncover dark secrets and an old curse!

Story was okay, sometimes I felt a little lost in it though… pretty common with HOGs, I know. Some of the scenes rather surprised me as it's not common for HOGs to be so brutal. Puzzles and hidden object scenes were okay with a good difficulty. There were parts that required some backtracking though. Good for casual gaming.

Simple looking disappearance of a foreign manservant leads Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson deep into darkness where old mysteries far beyond human imagination are lurking. Search for answers will lead our brave duo through London's docks, Switzerland Asylum, swamps in the New world and an old abandoned lighthouse. Would Sherlock's bright mind be powerful enough to overcome the growing insanity?

Sherlock meets with Cthulhu created by H.P. Lovecraft and it's a rather good experience, although some problems are still present. Visuals are old, but otherwise okay. Most of the graphic bugs of its predecessor are corrected or at least not so disturbing. Music is fine, but sometimes a dramatic music was playing in otherwise calm situations. Overall atmosphere is unsettling and creepy, which works well. Voice acting is again quite varied from pretty good to pretty bad.
This time we have two different points-of-view to choose from - first person and 3rd person. I have mostly played in the first person view as I found it more convenient, but the 3rd person view was good when searching for some missing interactions. Big help was the ability to highlight such interaction as some of the items are barely visible and without it we would be left with just the popular pixel hunting. We will spent most of the time in the shoes of our dear Sherlock, but Watson will also shine in some story parts.

Same as with the previous game (The Secret of the Silver Earring) we have at our disposal Sherlock's diary full of important information - dialogs, books, letters, observations… one big flaw though is that we can't consult it when it is most needed. Sometimes Sherlock asks Watson a question about the story (like where to proceed etc.) and we are required to actually write down the answer. Although I really liked this aspect it can turn to be a little frustrating… I am not a native English speaker and even with the subtitles it was sometimes hard to catch all of the information as Sherlock talks rather quickly, so you are left just with your memory, intuition, guessing or walkthrough. Not the best design.
Another important accessories of our great detective are tweezers, magnifying glass and meter. With them we can take a closer look at some of the evidence. This really suits the game.

It wouldn't be a detective adventure game without proper logical puzzles. Sadly their difficulty varies from easy / normal towards ridiculously hard. I have to admit, yet again, that I am not as clever as our greatest detective of them all and need some kind of help. Usually it would be in the form of a book or some hint (I love Nancy Drew)… no, we have a book that tells us that to keep away hungry mosquitos we have to use a lemon… really? REALLY? For that we get advice and for a horribly long sequence of numbers all we get is Sherlock's statement that it's easy to solve… no it isn't when I don't have the slightest clue on how to even begin!!! Argh.
Also I have found myself quite lost and uncertain of what to do next more often than I would like. We are yet again closed in the location until we find all things needed there, but sometimes I wasn't sure what else exactly he wanted. Another problem for me was that Sherlock often stated that something is uninteresting, so I ignored it, just for him to later need it without any obvious connection.

I can recommend Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened to lovers of adventure games with mysterious almost horror stories. Just be prepared for some unbalanced difficulty and few bad game design choices.

United States of America is making a standard military drill when it turns out into unexpected defensive mission. The year is 1983 and the enemy is appearing right next to them. The Soviet army is the first that comes to their mind, but it’s soon revealed that the truth is more difficult as the attackers are "Americans", just from a different universe! Their push is desperate and pretty aggressive. To stand a chance the Americans have to pass the barrier and enter enemy's reality, but they are gonna find there another enemy even more dangerous than the alternate army.

I really liked the graphic design and interface, it's rather simple, but it suits the overall atmosphere of the game. Although it's true that the individual maps could be a little more varied. I enjoyed the visuals of the units, be it on the map or in the closer look in the interface, but sometimes they could be hard to distinguish among themselves and especially at the beginning I choose the wrong unit because of it (always pay a proper attention to description).
Between missions are cutscenes that uncover little about the story, but mostly shows the mood of the soldiers. The voice acting is top notch! Overall the cutscenes do a great job in setting the right mood. The story is somewhat uncertain though.

Gameplay wise it's a tactical turn-based strategy game where you have to meet certain winning conditions - capture all points in order, capture all points (indifferently of order) or escort mission. The difficulty is slowly rising, but sometimes there are hardcore spikes which end up with multiple mission restarts; on the other hand there also rather easy levels even in the last chapter.
Every level begins with a selection of your units. You have limited points for them so you have to choose wisely, most of the time you can after a certain number of turns call for reinforcements and that can be what saves you in the end… or not. Each unit has a different movement speed and some of them even require a setting up before taking an action. Also most of the units can't move and fire in the same turn. This is crucial as you can get destroyed even before properly positioning yourself against the enemy.
When I started I was worried for my soldiers and even restarted the level if I lost someone. I have quickly realized that this isn't going to work in the long run as the enemy has a larger force against me and also quite an unfair advantage… The enemy always plays as second so it is you who has to move into the unknown. You can't scout ahead safely, because once you move you can't turn back and most of the time you end up right before an enemy unit which is gonna destroy you in the next turn. As you are mostly required to capture points in a certain order, you can't leave them unprotected as the enemy will push on you pretty hard… once you leave some route open be sure to get invaded by it. So the offensive approach is a no go then. Okay, you learn from this and prepare a trap for him. You position yourself carefully and create a protected perimeter and he just stands right on the border to never cross it, because he knows that you are gonna destroy him. He will cross it only under one condition - he is certain that he will overpower you and destroy you instead. And in most cases the luck works in his favor. Oh and don't forget his mortar that is set up on the other end of the map and can hit you anywhere where his troops are… and even though you know from where he is shooting exactly as it shows up on the map, you can't attack him with your mortar because he is hidden by a fog of war!!! So he is slowly killing you and you can't do anything against it… except for a suicidal mission.
This is all so stupid, because you can't create any proper tactic, he is always one step ahead. You are then left with sacrificing your units in a hope of luring him to your trap and gaining some breaking point by it. I also forgot to say that soldiers and vehicles can only attack just some of the units - like simple infantry can attack other infantry and not armored vehicles; infantry carrying anti-tanks missiles can attack even armored vehicles, but they have limited shots and so on and on. Now imagine yourself creating a trap against tanks when an enemy helicopter comes in and starts to kill your units one by one, because you have nothing to fend it off… Another thing that pretty much didn't make any sense for me was the inability of the infantry to move and shoot in the same turn, because like this they turn into sitting ducks (to add salt into my wounds - enemy has an infantry unit that can move and attack). Even more absurd is that they can't perform any action after leaving from a transport vehicle… really?

In addition to a strategy game there are two other mini games - cribbage solitaire and signals intelligence puzzle. This was my first time playing cribbage solitaire so it took me a little while to get accustomed to it, but it's quite enjoyable. Although the 100 wins achievement is simply ridiculous. In the intelligence puzzle you have to hack the radio console by connecting circuit. Some of them were pretty hard, but I have really liked it!

Even though I'm grumbling about Möbius I have enjoyed the whole game. It was challenging, hard, mind breaking, but also pretty satisfying upon the victory. Some of the elements could be more balanced and developed, but it wasn't a disappointment. If you are not afraid of being pushed over your limits then feel free to cross over the Möbius front.