Unsolved Crimes (DS)

[  « Previous Page | 1 | 2  ]

However, I have to say that I quickly became annoyed with the game. While at first you feel like you're free to roam the crime scene and investigate as you see fit, in actual fact you're basically wandering around, clicking on different objects until you click on one specific item that triggers a Query from your partner. Answer this correctly, and it either leads to another question, or just sends you back to clicking on more objects until you pick the one that triggers the next Query. I may have been expecting too much from the poor old DS, but there's very little actual 'investigation' involved here, it's just simple observation and very, very basic logic puzzles (eg: the killer has tried to fake a robbery to disguise the crime, so which suspect is it not likely to be, the wife, the friend or the neighbour with a record for robbery? The answer: It's the neighbour that did it, because he wouldn't fake a robbery as that would point attention at him.)

This in itself perhaps wouldn't make the game a total washout, however I came across another problem owing to the game's linear nature: you get stuck. On the case where you need to solve the murder of a man in his lounge, I eliminated all the suspects bar his wife. Surely then, case closed? Apparently not. Instead, I was told to gather more evidence. I had already established that the robbery was faked, the wife owned the murder weapon, she had smashed up the whole room in her faking of the robbery but not her favourite crockery, and she had been home at the time of the murder despite saying she'd been out shopping. For some reason though, the game wanted me to 'study the shopping'.

 Advertisement

So I clicked on the Query for the Shopping bag. This time however, unlike the previous Queries, instead of being given a question with four answers, I was given the items from the shopping bag on the table and told to search them for clues. I picked them up with the stylus, I turned them round, I zoomed in and zoomed out, I established that there were several items of fruit and two bottles of milk. I looked at the labels in the milk, I noted that the apples were damaged, that the bananas were 'made in Florida', I did everything it seemed I possibly could do with these objects, but nothing happened.

I don't mean that I couldn't work out what to do, I mean simply that nothing happened. I wasn't given the option to answer the Query - there was no question. 'Maybe I've missed something', I thought, and put the shopping back and checked the entire crime scene over again. Still no question to answer. Maybe there's something new in the files I wondered? So I went through and read everything again. Still nothing. To add to the frustration, I couldn't leave the level - the game just kept telling me to examine the shopping... I started to feel like I was stuck in a really bad version of Groundhog Day. Figuring that something was wrong - maybe the game had got stuck in a loop, and the question I needed hadn't been triggered - I actually restarted the case from scratch, unearthing the clues and eliminating the suspects all over again, looking at the evidence and answering all the Queries correctly, until I came to Query 9... where once again I was told to study the shopping. Which I had done, about 17 times, all to no avail! Hang on, I thought, maybe the 'Hint' option will help me, and so I selected that. My hint? 'Look closely at the shopping'. Great, thanks, that's SO helpful guys!

Eventually, it took the insight of Mr Orry, and the knowledge of the chaps at GameFaqs.com. They had me examine the shopping again, this time focussing on a specific apple. Ignore the bruise ('this fruit appears damaged'!) and look really, really hard for the tiny dark red mark, on the slightly less dark red skin of the apple, and you see a minute blood spot. This brought up the four questions I needed, and finally (FINALLY) I could solve the crime.

Undaunted - well, okay, so slightly daunted, seeing as I'd just taken about four hours to complete what was essentially the first level - I plowed on with the game. Each level really is basically a case of simply pointing at and clicking on different items until a question pops up, then answering the questions to move on. You need to read up on the information files and study the evidence in order to get the answers to those questions, but this just ends up feeling like one long exam. And exams, generally, are NOT fun! Things are made worse by the fact that the logic in the game is often a little suspect. You may have figured out, for instance, by reading two witness statements, studying the bloody knife and the fingerprint, and by looking at the various disturbed items of furniture in a crime scene, exactly who did it. However, instead of simply being able to state who did it, and then list your reasoning, the game instead says something like 'so you think it was person A, eh? Tell me why...' and then asks you to pick ONE piece of evidence from the statements, the exhibits and the crime scene. Trouble is, often there are three or four key facts that have led you to your suspect, but the game wants you to highlight them in a preset order, and if you don't select the evidence in exactly the required order, you lose a life. Granted, if you lose all your lives you can start off from the last Query, but this means that eventually you simply get frustrated and start clicking on random things just to get to the end of the level.

Ultimately, this was an ambitious game for the DS, and it's reaching just slightly too far. If it had been delivered on one of the more powerful consoles, where you might have the option to genuinely 'investigate' crime scenes as you see fit, in the order that makes sense to you, then I'm sure it would be a hit. As it is though, the limitations of the DS means the gameplay is too linear, and some of the clues far too obscure, for the overall experience to really be enjoyable. Oh, and the '5 exciting action games' which are plugged on the press blurb and on the back of the packaging are just lame - the car chase in particular (where you must 'guide' a car down a completely straight street, simply moving left and right to avoid trash cans) would have been disappointing back when simplistic games like Paperboy and Pac-Man were seen as revolutionary... to offer gamers something this dull nowadays, even as a mini-game, is just insulting!

[  « Previous Page | 1 | 2  ]