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Helen Jones has a knack for helping people find that "special someone." After retiring to a small seaside community she keeps on doing what she does best: helping the townspeople find true love in Matchmaker: Joining Hearts. Unfortunately there's not much to love about this by-the-numbers hidden object game.

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Things are not going well for your rag-tag troupe in Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera. The location of your latest performance could be on the cover of Creepy Town Weekly, the phones aren't working, and people are not only turning up dead, but their bodies are going missing. Unsettling, to say the least.

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1 Penguin 100 Cases is one of those frustrating hidden object games that just doesn't live up to its full potential. A cute coming of age story about a young penguin named Pengoo who gets separated from his flock and must find his way home, it boasts lengthy gameplay, unique cartoonish graphics and plenty of creative puzzles and scenarios - as well as an unhealthy number of flaws.

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Fiona Finch and the Finest Flowers, a time management game from 1morebee, owes a lot to the likes of Farm Frenzy and Ranch Rush, but still manages to impress with polished gameplay and new twists, including swapping out farm animals altogether and focusing strictly on flowers and fruit.

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The noir genre of film and literature is packed full of great, famous hard-boiled detective characters, not one of whom I can actually name. My tastes run more toward guys like Tracer Bullet and Flint Paper, private dicks who somehow manage to perfectly skewer the genre by doing nothing but remaining unerringly true to it. For awhile, it looked like Nick Chase would take his place among that esteemed company, but when all was said and done there wasn't quite enough gum on his shoes to put him over the top.

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If, like me, the upcoming Winter Olympic Games have you wishing you could visit beautiful Vancouver, Canada, this may be just the game you need. Playing through Big City Adventure: Vancouver is like taking a virtual tour of the city, mixing history and trivia with local landmarks and scenery. Throw in a bit of winter sports flavor, and it's almost like you're there for the games themselves, just with fewer national anthems.

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"Sometimes, you just can't go back." That's the general feeling when starting up Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower. Released way back in November of 2000, it's easy to see how developer Her Interactive learned to hone their Nancy Drew titles to both a science and art. This one is full of missteps, but only because we have over ten years and 17 games as perspective.

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