Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow

OS: Windows XP/Vista
CPU: 800 Mhz or faster Processor
RAM: 256 MB
Hard Drive: 82 MB

Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow review

Sleepy Hollow is an American town that has a permanent place in its folklore for the stories of the Headless Horseman. The Headless Horseman was the ghost of a soldier who had lost his head in a battle and roamed around the town in the night in search of its head. Whether it got back its head or not is still not confirmed but the loss of many other heads in the town was reported. This grotesque and spooky tale is being retold through the game of Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow.

This game is the only from the lot of contemporary HOG games that still did not wander from the old format. The other games have tried to mix in a lot of varieties by introducing elements of multiple rooms, inventory items etc., but ‘Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow’ follows the old and beaten track of sticking to the original HOG elements.

The game has a total of 12 chapters where the gamer is required to search the town of Sleepy Hollow for clues in order to zero in on the next victim of the Headless Horsemen. The clues are all strewn across the town at twenty different locations like the church, graveyard, stables, town square, schoolhouse etc. Like in any other HOG game, here also you need to search for various types of items on your list before the end of stipulated time. The biggest plus of this game is that the items that are required to be found have at least a little connection with the location. For instance at the stable you are required to find items like harness, branding iron etc. which are somewhat related to a stable or a horse.

You have the privilege of using three hints per scene and you can even earn extra hints by finding out the Jack-o-lantern present in every scene. The hint creates a glow around an item but beware at times even the hint may not point at the exact item. The items that already have a sparkling appearance are the doors to mini games and you need to solve the mini games before getting that item. The mini games vary from very easy to very tough ones. You cannot skip the mini games because you have to get the item to complete your list by playing the mini games associated with it.

There are a lot of objects that we all may not be familiar with and that was biggest challenge in the game because it had the names of such items that I have never heard in my life. For example there are items like nocturnal and it means some type of a ruler and garden cloche which means a tent like structure. So, it is also a test of our English vocab.

Conclusion: The quality of the graphics that has been used is really very high and scenes are made to be really spooky with the narration doing its own magic. The spookiest part of the game was the sound of the horseman when he growled like “blood bone flesh!” I was really disappointed by the sudden end and to tell the truth it really frustrated me. Other than some small holes “Mystery Legends-Sleepy Hollow” is pretty much a decent game and is worth taking a dig at.