Microsoft Treasure Hunt (Win 8)

Not the worst MS Casual game... but close.

While not the absolute worst game in the Microsoft Casual Games series (looking at you, Jackpot), when it's all said and done, Treasure Hunt is just not worth it. You might think, like I did, that a more visually stimulating, marginally more story-driven version of Minesweeper would be fun. And for 1-2 hours, you'd be right. But then, you'd be wrong. So very wrong.

This game quickly turns into nothing more than a grind. Through the earlier levels, you can rely on your Minesweeper skills, and enjoy your strategy-driven progression. But once you're into the 20s and 30s, you start running into impossible choice after impossible choice. You get some items that help you through them, sure, but by using the items, you eliminate the strategy. There's no challenge to just clicking the tiles that you already know are safe. And after clearing out the safe areas, you're immediately presented with another impossible choice, requiring another item. After not too long, you become all to familiar with the pattern of 10-12 levels of painful ease, 8-15 levels of glorious appropriate challenge, and then an infinite number of strategy-resistant item-driven levels that test little more than your ability to seek out and collect items in the levels leading up to that point.

Using some of the strategies in the guides that are out there will reduce the amount of time this game takes, and will at least speed up the process of polishing off this dull slog of a game, but in my opinion, the amount of enjoyment this game provides in return for the amount of time you spend grinding and looking forward to being done is not even close to proportional.
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