Not only is this week President’s Day, but also we pay respects to the queen of Buckingham Palace.

PC and Mac Catch of the Week: Hidden Mysteries: Buckingham Palace: This game won first runner-up Best Travel Adventure Game of 2008! In Hidden Mysteries: Buckingham Palace you must peel back the curtains on one of the grandest buildings in the western world to look for treasure and uncover its deepest secrets. Learn fun facts about several royal locations while you search for hidden objects and play ingenious mini-games. Follow romantic notes strewn across beautifully rendered scenes in this exciting sequel to Hidden Mysteries: Civil War.

Catch the deal for your PC! Use coupon code CATCH299

Catch the deal for your Mac! Use coupon code CATCH299.

This $2.99 Catch of the Week runs through Sunday, February 27 at 11:59pm.

Remember Big Fish Games has a Daily Deal offering a different game for $2.99 every day. (Look to the right.)

The annual Fall Carnival makes up one of my favorite memories from elementary school. I remember enjoying going from booth to booth to win prizes and never winning the cake walk. It was also neat seeing my teachers outside of the school day. Now that I have two kids in elementary school (one is now in high school!), I look forward to the school carnival.

The Hidden Object Show 2 doesn’t quite compare to the elementary school carnival, but it’s colorful and contains many games within the game. The game takes a unique approach in not having players find X objects in every scene with special activities in between. Instead, players see the fortune teller who decides what kind of game they’ll play.

The 11 hidden object games range from the basic find 10 of the same category of objects (sweets and things you throw) and silhouettes of objects to Hangman-style (find the letters to build the list of objects to find) and compare two scenes to spot the difference.

The game’s biggest strength is length with 300 rounds! You could play it for two or three days and barely make a dent in the game. However, it also makes the The Hidden Object Show 2 feel like it has no direction. After playing four rounds in a level, you win a prize. The prize list scrolls through and names your prize. Ho hum. Just not exciting.

In addition to finding objects, players can look for tickets to grow your ticket total, question marks for one or two more hints to add on to the three in every round, and skip chips for skipping games you don’t want to play while on the fortune teller scene.

Sometimes the scenes overwhelm with so many objects blending with the busy background. It gets old. When asking for a hint, the showman comes out with his cane to point to the item. He can be swift that you miss where he points or you can’t see the object even after he points it out.

Scenes contain bright colors and the showman has a little character. Sounds get carried away at times. Season hidden object players will love this one because the objects prove challenging to find with so many things in each scene. Others might tire of the game’s business and lack of direction.

The Hidden Object Show 2 earns its money the hard way with variety and lasting a long time. But its long length may bore some who like to play for something. Life’s a carnival — give The Hidden Object Show 2 a try.

The Dream Day hidden objects game franchise returns with Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan, its fourth game in the series. Once again, the series introduces features that enhance the game. Sometimes a game in a series would receive new features that look like an ugly attempt to claim the game isn’t a rehash of the previous with a new storyline thrown in.

Oh, I’m not saying sequels can’t recapture their predecessor’s success with a new story, new sets, and new characters. Fans love getting more of the same. With casual games coming out with a new game on a daily basis, it takes no time for a game to look dated. In fact, I’m judging handheld games — the same category I did last year — and these categories have no new games. The games look and feel dated.

Back to New York. Dream Day First Home introduces the two story route. Dream Day Wedding applies this feature by giving us two couples from which to choose. Play one first and then play the other couple next time around. I run into a technical problem (fixed) with the first couple after almost finishing the game play, so rather replaying them — I switch to the other couple for a change of pace.

Dream Day games come with a Choose a Story, which lets players decide where the story takes them next by picking one of three options. At the end of a Choose a Story, players earn a Time Booster item. Remember the item as it won’t appear on the list of things to find and gain one minute when you find it.

Bluebirds also appear in every scene save for Wedding Crises scenes. For every five bluebirds found, you win an extra hint. The scenes — prior to a mini-game or Choose a Story — come with three hints plus whatever you earn in finding bluebirds.

Mini-games fit the game’s wedding planning theme perfectly. After finding all the objects for a level, you’ll get the wedding registry scene where you pick a gift to open that leads to either the Choc-O-Matic Fountain or Party Puzzle (seating chart) mini-game. Players need to turn metal tubes in Choc-O-Matic Fountain to ensure the chocolate can flow from start to end in every pipe or else guests won’t get their chocolate in the wedding. Not a good thing!

Party Puzzle brings something I haven’t seen appear as a mini-game. Each placecard contains a guest with one or two colors on the sides. The colors on the sides of the placecards must line up with like colors. One joker is available to help you out of a rough spot.

After completing one of the two mini-games, you play the apartment puzzle. The bride gives you, the wedding planner, a key to her apartment where you hunt down the list of things she needs. That list takes you through the next few scenes.

The apartment puzzle has no time limits, so explore the scene and figure out what to do. While you can press “Solve” if you get stuck, these don’t take a lot of work to figure out. Just look for clickable items or watch for the sparkles giving you a hint of where to look. Some items will go into your inventory so you can use them with other objects to make something happen.

Now that you have the list, move on to the next scenes to find them. Sometimes the bride will ring you up and announce she doesn’t need an item on her list anymore — saving you one item to find… IF you find your cell phone before it stops ringing. Clever! A surprise waits in some scenes. You find an item only to discover you’re stuck in a room and you must quickly find your way out in the Escape Puzzle.

The Wedding Crisis has appeared in the previous Dream Day games. In these scenes, players have less time and must dig through the messier and busier scenes to overcome a crisis whether the roses the bride wanted sell out or the bakery can’t do the wedding cake. Once the crisis passes, you design an item that will appear in the wedding and its album.

The scenes repeat often and the objects rarely change locations. The only things that change are the Apartment Puzzles and Wedding Crisis. However, if you play the game again to try taking a different route in the Choose a Story, you’ll have to work through the same scenes again. Considering I play one couple twice due the technical problem, it’s a pain as I feel like I’m repeating everything I had done the first time.

One more disappointing element — other than in the name and the logo, you wouldn’t know you’re in New York. It’s a wonderful city with beautiful architecture and great scenes — why bother adding “Manhattan,” if you’re not going to showcase the Big Apple?

Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan takes a few pages out of its previous games and adds a few original ideas (Escape Puzzle, bride calling you, and Party Puzzle) while also copying similar features found in other games first (Apartment Puzzle) and finding a bunch of one item in scenes (eggs, arrows, etc.). Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan still provides a pleasurable adventure for fans of the series. It’s also a good one for those new to hidden object games and may not challenge the seasoned players.

Download Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan from your favorite game site:

• Big Fish Games
• Amazon

The third Hidden Expedition game of the hidden object game series takes on many new features to take the series to new heights. Hidden Expedition: Amazon promises fans a bigger adventure with more to do and it delivers.

In the latest expedition, the only thing you receive is an old beat up map with a reference to the legendary Beetle Temple to aid your search to find a missing professor. As you delve deep into the Amazonian jungles, you discover pieces of the professor’s journal to learn more.

The heart of the game comes in finding many hidden objects and crossing them off your list. Of course, these Amazon-themed scenes surround the hidden objects in hopes to make them harder to find while staying true to the theme.

Two new twists join this edition while you hunt for objects — some move into your inventory for later use. You also can click any item on your list of hidden objects to see a silhouette of the item. Does this make the game too easy? Or does it help a lot considering some objects blend in too well with the scene? Hints are still available where a circle appears around the object’s location. Seeing silhouettes doesn’t count as a hint.

But I say the game is what we make of it. If you want it to be hard, don’t look at the silhouettes period. Who says you have to use hints? We can control how easy or hard we make a game.

Seek out five beetles per scene to receive one shiny new hint added to your hint pack. If you find only four beetles when you finish the scene, no hint for you even if you find one in the next scene. The beetle count starts over with each new scene.

Puzzles. That’s the best new feature in Hidden Expedition: Amazon. Who cares if Mystery Case Files uses this? I love these puzzles and take ‘em where I can get ‘em. No, no… these aren’t jigsaw puzzles, but bona fide brain puzzles where you must figure out what to do. I figure out most of them and accidentally passed on one of them not realizing I clicked “Solve” when I thought it was “Hint.” So if you get stuck, you can kind of skip it.

You also hit “find 20 of something” scenes. Another copy from Mystery Case Files. While some elements look familiar, Hidden Expedition: Amazon offers original puzzles plus one extraordinary feature: a symphony. According to the game’s press release, this game contains the first ever, live orchestra music score for a downloadable casual game. The music rings from the Berlin Film Orchestra instruments.

The game’s press releases heavily promoted this feature. Well, beware some of us are not easily impressed with such audio. The music sounds lovely, but I couldn’t tell you that it exceeds some other casual game’s high quality audio as they won’t sound sharper or better to me. To me, I look for the rhythm and tone — whether they annoy or complement the game play. Here, the audio lovingly pairs up with the game and its top notch scenes.

Hidden Expedition: Amazon deserves a spot on your computer even if you play a select few hidden object games.

I’ve been a fan of James Patterson’s work since first reading Along Came a Spider. It was the first time I enjoyed something with a “spider” in it though it was figurative. Since then, I loved reading Alex Cross stories. Maybe I appreciated it more because the stories took place in Washington, DC — the only place I’ve lived outside of Texas.

I don’t read fiction much these days with my focus on reviewing and abstracting non-fiction books. But that didn’t stop me from checking out James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club TV series. I liked it, but its network canceled the show. Gosh durnit.

Nice seeing Dallas resident, Angie Harmon on the show along with her cool buds including the one that looks like Oprah Winfrey. The platinum blond lawyer was a little much, but you adapt to her. Besides, they didn’t match the book’s characters, but the game does. From what I understand as I haven’t read these books, but they’re on my long list of fiction books to read if I ever make it to the list.

The show didn’t win raves, so I wasn’t optimistic about the computer game. Good thing my “judging the book by the cover” didn’t stop me as Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet proved creativity is still possible in hidden object games. With hidden object games coming out daily — sometimes more than once a day — casual gamers wonder if any originality remains. “YES!” The evidence is in this game. I’ve seen all the TV episodes and the game doesn’t copy any of them or the books.

Of course, the story starts with the discovery of a young woman’s body. After a little analysis, we learn someone poisoned her and branded her chest with Chinese letters. Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends set off to search for the woman’s identity and her murderer. Forensic examiner Claire Washburn, newspaper reporter Cindy Thomas, and ADA Jill Bernhardt help Lindsay with her investigation. We not only do Lindsay’s job, but we also do Cindy’s and Claire’s job. Jill doesn’t appear much, but she’s around.

The game tells the story through short dialog — something that should be a standard in games. It can be hard to read a lot of dialog in one sitting especially on a screen. I think we absorb the story better in pieces. Occasionally, the game updates us on the story through well done comic strip style cartoons between scenes.

The “Skip” and continue buttons appear at the bottom of these scenes. However, these sometimes show on top of the dialog and you can’t read some of it. I moved the mouse all over the place trying to hide the controls to no avail. This problem occurs off and on throughout the game.

While finding hidden objects, some items go into your inventory for later use making a true connection between the found objects and the game’s storyline — something few hidden object games pull off. Sometimes you pick up a cotton swab for collecting evidence and parts of an object that you need to put together.

As a kid, I loved doing logic puzzles where you had to figure out the order based on the information given. A mini-game takes place in Claire’s lab where you first pick up all the supplies you need (bottles, Petri dish, eye dropper) and then sort the bottles based on their instructions.

After putting the chemicals in order, you use the dropper to describe the substance such as red foam, blue fizz, and purple none. Kind of boring after the first couple of times. But it involves you in the investigation making you feel a part of the action. The computer processes and reports the results of the evidence. I don’t know a better way of doing that. At least, it’s better than playing Memory!

Another mini-game involves sorting microfiche covers so you can look up articles in the newspaper archives. Sort the covers by color and a common theme. Once you finish, you’ll pull out one of the microfiches, do a search using keywords (which you must figure out — another cool feature), and read the article for more inside information on the story.

Though you return to some scenes a few times, it never feels like you’re looking for the same stuff again (except in the lab, but it’s justified). The objects — even the small ones — almost always pick up without a problem (some hidden objects make it hard to pick up the right items). Some hidden object games don’t do a good job of describing or naming more obscure items — not an issue here.

Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet does a beautiful job of integrating hidden objects, sound, art, mystery, and detective work. I believe it deserves recognition as one of the best hidden object games.

It won’t surprise me to see another one come out considering all the Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes games that keep popping out. Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet surpasses those in all-around production values. An almost perfect game.