Item - Assignment Loch Ness

For the most part, this is quite similar to Haunted Island -- you have to find a limited number of things (in this case, opportunities to photograph the monster) before you lose by making too many mistakes (in this case, wasting photographs). The vast majority of decisions are completely arbitrary or rely on having stumbled across key inventory items (a map, a newspaper article or a nature trail guide). I did find this marginally more interesting than the previous volume -- the photography theme is somewhat unique, the visual depiction of every photo you take is a nice touch, and at least a couple of the choices seem slightly more meaningful -- but it's still a fairly bland exercise in luck and memory. The whole thing is brought down a notch by the portrayal of your rival photographers, Dave Conn and Kate Dupe. Besides the cheesy names, these characters show up in disguise to sabotage you so many times that it defies all credibility and detracts from the story. In any case, this book could certainly have been worse, but it's not good enough to spend much time or energy on.

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