Shades of Black 2: Triumph!

Well I had some good fun today, and finished the game quite nicely. I had thought that the in-game hint system was malfunctioning, but no! It turned out that it was giving me a clue to a puzzle that I had kind of bypassed. Didn't realize it was a puzzle. Once I realized that, I had no more trouble and was able to do the rest of the game on my own.

I'm not saying if I was right about the murderer. There are not a lot of options as to who it might be in this game, so I was either right, or I was wrong. Play the game yourself and find out.

We go to some very nice places in the last third of the game. We even go to a nice Swedish beach:

Looks like the ocean, but could be a large lake

We run across several puzzle boxes. Some have clues to find, others can be manipulated by trial and error pretty easily. Here's one:

You don't need a hint for this one. Really. Just poke around and observe.

I always enjoy seeing the way the other continent lives. Here's a kitchen that opens into a bedroom. These appear to be fairly small kitchens, mostly:

Small, but I could cook in this room.

There was a really nice many-layered puzzle in this game. You have to find four pieces that fit into a toy, and that leads you to another puzzle box, which leads to another puzzle. Of course, there are more puzzles for finding all four of those pieces. Really seriously fun! You feel as though you're making good progress. 

And of course, we get some lovely shots of local attractions, such as the "Sun Cannon," which fires when the sun ignites a certain point:

Lots of stuff to be found here!

Some of the local attractions look even better at night:

The leaning Water Tower nicely lit up

And, if you've never realized this, the lady who shows up as Carol's friend Stina, the one who runs all the different kiosks, actually is the lady who voices Carol!

Both Stina and Carol!

I think this may be one of the better Carol Reed games. It stays constantly interesting, has some really lovely photography, stays away from derelict factories this time (thankfully) and really does have some challenging but solvable puzzles. Plus, if you get frustrated, the in-game hint system is always there to nudge you in the right direction.

I'm ranking this one right up there with Time Stand Still. This is an excellent game!

Grab a copy from MDNA Games! (And, I just noticed that although I got this copy on Steam, the MDNA site says this game is also available for Mac! That's really a welcome change!)

This is a good, solid, fun adventure mystery point and click game.

Enjoy!