When I was a girl, my grandparents owned a big two-story antique store in downtown Columbus, Ohio. I used to love to visit to see the amazing treasures they’d found and put on display.
From beautiful marble-topped washstands to big-horned Victrolas, the store’s inventory was always magical and fascinating. Of course, only the ground floor was occupied by the antique store. My grandparents rented the top floor to a "club." My grandmother always said that word, club, with disapproving secrecy and sneering contempt in her voice. And due to her refusal to speak about it, I was absolutely obsessed with what went on up there.
From very carefully crafted questions (I couldn’t seem too interested, you see), I was able to discover that it was a men's club, and that they met there at least once a week. The less my grandmother revealed, the more preoccupied I became with these mysterious men and what they were doing just steps above my head. Considering I was an avid reader from the age of four onward, I conjured that this was a magical order of men preserving the mysteries of the ages.
Not long before I left Ohio as a young teenager to move to Orlando with my parents, on a visit to my grandparents, my grandpa had occasion to "check" something upstairs at the "club," and I wangled a way to accompany him. I ascended each step right after him and waited on the landing as he fiddled with his keys, finally inserting the correct one in the lock and giving it a decided turn to the right.
With a flourish, he opened the door and I gazed within to see… a saloon. That’s pretty much all it was. From the looks of the red vinyl club chairs and the smell of stale cigarette smoke, this mysterious club was a place for middle-class, Midwestern men to escape their wives, drink, and play poker.
A bit of a let down, wouldn't you say?
Still, secret clubs, or orders if you will, still have the power to captivate and hold me in their thrall. I mean, what ARE they doing in there? Does it involve long robes and secret handshakes?
The Secret Order: Masked Intent plays upon this fascination quite competently. This follow-up to Secret Order: New Horizon begins with a bitter betrayal.
One of the newest members of the Order of the Griffins has turned traitor. This person, who everyone thought was a hero, assumes the place of the one he murdered, an individual in the upper echelons of the order — the Secret Five. He’s invited to replace his victim since the other four believe he attempted to save him. And, in doing so, gains control of a mask with supernatural abilities.
You, as Sarah, the daughter of one of the leaders, must now race through time to obtain the one item that can subdue the mask — a magical scepter.
The Secret Order: Masked Intent has a National Treasure-cum-Da Vinci Code feel to it. Except the Knights Templar and Illuminati are replaced by the aforementioned Order of the Griffin. The story is a bit hard to grasp for anyone who didn’t play the initial offering. Yet, it was compelling enough to keep me following along.
However, when Sarah finds the mysterious sailing ship that takes people through time (under the naval museum, no less) they sort of lost me a little. Up until then, the storyline had been somewhat grounded in reality. The time-traveling ship was a little hard to swallow.
The mini-games were fairly straightforward and the help button provides nice textual instructions.
I thought the HOAs were unique in that the items you find seemed to be in keeping with the area itself. You know how normally you hit an HOA in, say, a broom closet, and you find all sorts of nutty things in there: pizza slices, jack-in-the-boxes, top hats? In The Secret Order: Masked Intent, on the other hand, your HOA in a gardening shed required you to find, wonder of wonders, actual gardening items.
I felt like the developers could have done more with the audio. There’s dialogue, but little mood music to heighten the emotions.
I think The Secret Order: Masked Intent is a great game for hidden object adventure fans, but I do recommend playing the first one to get the most out of the experience.