For those who really didn't like this game, I suspect they are seasoned HOG fans and enjoy the more involved games. Although I play a lot of HOGs, I do like an easy one once in awhile and this one fit the bill! I did use the hints on occasion and found them for the most part helpful. I especially liked the "open door" concept that tells which areas to search and eliminates a LOT of frustration and useless backtracking.
I considered the graphics to be mostly excellent and one of the reasons I bought the game. I found the perspectives to be an interesting change and although the hidden object scenes were junk pile, I consider them "nice" junk because the sizes and locations were mostly correct and believable. One drawback (and it is in a lot of games these days) is items that are not physical objects, i.e., stencils or drawings. If I was searching somewhere and could not pick something up, logically to me it is not an "item" that should be searchable.
Although there were no voice-overs, there are ghostly sounds in the music room for sure and may have been in other rooms as someone else mentioned. When I entered the music room I thought, "sure am glad I'm not playing this game in the dark!"
The only issue I had with the actual game play is that there was a brief hesitation when the last item in a hidden object scene was selected. Other than that the game ran fine for me on my Windows XP.
I liked that the mouse was not hard-coded for right-handed people (easy for us lefties) and that there were two modes of game play: regular & expert. Also, I was able to play in windowed mode which I much prefer. And although the game does have a pop-up inventory (much prefer stationary), it was relatively benign as far as popping up at the wrong time.
Hoping to see the sequel out soon since it's been a year since this one came out!