Cate West: The Vanishing Files

OS: Windows XP/Vista
CPU: 1.0 GHz or faster Processor
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Drive: 81 MB

Cate West: The Vanishing Files review

Cate West – The Vanishing Files is certainly not going to vanish in thin air and is going to say in my memory for a long time. It is a beautiful and compelling game based on the rules of classic hidden objects games. An interesting mystery and an even better presentation make the game a treat to play.

The author Cate West has the unusual power of touching objects and finding out the places, people and things linked with it in any way. This unusual talent is to be used in helping the police pin down criminals. As a gamer you will lead the life of Cate and help the police find the missing links and untie the mystery behind a crime spree. But all in the end somehow leads to the family of the talented author!

This game is one of the longest games in its genre and has a total of 75 scenes to play. There are 15 very engrossing criminal cases divided into 5 phases. The first section deals with clue finding where you need to find the objects present in your list at messy places. It is not necessary to find all the items (clues) on the list but most of them as quickly as possible.
After collecting the clues, Cate uses her unusual powers to zero in on the items that have a very strong connection with the criminal and it is these items that will be presented as evidence in the court of law. Now, again one has to go to new scenes to rejoin the missing links.

The next phase requires Cate to use her power to find out the location of the criminal. This means that you have to play a mini game where you need to find out the differences between two pictures. Now, when the picture is completed you will get the exact location of the criminal.

After this you need to identify the suspect by bringing all the people living in the street near the criminal’s location. Here, you need to surf through eight photographs along with some personal information on the person in the picture. This personal information needs to be matched with the clues that Cate has collected and arrest the true criminal.

Thins do not end with the arrest of the criminal and it is time for giving testimony in front of the court. The testimony presentation requires a player to pass a “find the difference” test puzzle. Here you need to show that all the things seen at the crime scene matches with the things that you tell to the court. So, you will be given a long list of items or clues that were collected from various crime scenes and you need to drag and drop the items on the correct scenes.

Conclusion: The games plot gets a huge fillip through some engaging dialogues and the text bubbles that appear from time to time. Tinge of animation along with the great background music renders the scenes the crime scene effect that they needed. The graphics are just awesome and the scenes look very fresh even after you return back to them on a number of occasions. Your scores depend on how well you play the game with enough hints at your disposal. But you need to make the least use of these hints if you want to improve your score. Cate West- The Vanishing Files is definitely one of the best in its genre and has helped to set up higher standards for the other games.