It has been a while since the point-and-click adventure game was really popular; this popularity has seen a huge decline since the introduction of 3D games.  The point-and-click genre relies heavily on story and the characters who are involved, as the game play itself cannot be modified.  The Next Big Thing is set in a world where monsters are movie stars; you play as two reporters, alternating throughout the game.  The two characters are Liz Allaire, a strange reporter who can be quite fun to use in conversations because she can come out with some strange things to say.  The other lead is Dan Murray, another reporter who is cocky and arrogant.  There is some level of love tension between these two but this is never truly explored as they spend little time on the screen together.

The basic story of The Next Big Thing is that the two reporters are sent to an awards ceremony to write a story for “The Quill” when they discover something suspicious, and one of the monster actors goes missing.  This leads to the two to investigate this disappearance, but of course there is far more to the story, and this will keep players interested in the game wanting to explore the various exotic locations that the game features.  I don’t want to give the story away too much so I will not go into it anymore, but the story will you wondering what is around the corner, and players will always be surprised by the characters that they come across.

One thing that you will notice about The Next Big Thing is the visuals; these are excellent and really compliment the interesting premise for the game.  The graphics are pure cartoon graphics, solid colours and outlines and it works.  The character animation however can seem a little bit choppy at times, they are not all smooth.  Not to mention they walk around the area incredibly slow, you can double click for the character to instantly move to where you want, and I found myself doing this within the first five minutes of play time.

You have to do something drastically wrong to mess up the game play of a point and click game, and fortunately this aspect is intact.  A small tutorial would have been of benefit though, as there is introduction to the different aspects of playing the game, for example, how to pick items up.  This may be a staple within the point and click world, but as a relative newbie to the genre I was not aware of this and was going from room to room trying to work out what to do.  And even when I had worked this out, some of the puzzles simply did not make sense, fortunately however there is a hints feature and I found these very helpful through and this should assist those less adept at the genre get through the excellent story. 

The sound is passable, the characters have very interesting/funny/strange things to say and you will want to go through all the conversation choices just to hear what they have to say.  The game features a basic soundtrack that doesn’t do anything special, but it is just there.

Overall, for those wanting to scratch that point and click itch, you probably already have this game, for everyone else, The Next Big Thing features interesting characters and an interesting story and may be a good excuse to have a break from some twitch game play and simply enjoy the story of the game and flex that brain muscle.