Touch Detective

"My biggest DS Disappointment. For ages 12 and under."

I picked up this game from Atlus, a company who brought the highly unique and very amusing Phoenix Wright and the tense, difficult, and unusual Trauma Center, and, despite the E rating, was expecting a game that would still be able to keep me entertained for a while.

Sadly, this was not the case, and worse still, I feel its intended audience would be frustrated by the game and end up returning it without even finishing it.

Gameplay: 4/10
This was what disappointed me the most. There were several things wrong with the gameplay that bugged me. First of all, there was the adventure style. While I must admit that some games (Monkey Island comes to mind) had you grabbing items for no apparent reason, or knowing what you were looking for and then finding them, this game seemed to have extremely unintuitive ways of finding/using items. For instance, at one point in the game you must find scented paper. To get the paper, though, you have to buy an item from a store, take it out of the bag it comes in, then notice that the bag is scented. Another instance is you have to get a character to feel hot and turn the AC on. But the items you have to find to do this are found in a completely unrelated way. How would you have guessed that the pastry shop owner needs to clean out the refrigerator and that it would contain hot sauce? It often just seems arbitrary where things are.

And further more, speaking of arbitrary, a lot of time is spent chasing around people instead of actually working on the crime. Several times I have felt that intuitively I should speak to a certain character or look at a certain object, I am instead required to go look for someone who just ran off for her to tell me what she thinks is going on. Some events seem to take place only after talking to a bunch of people even if they don't have anything worthwhile to say. I can see several younger children, while enamored by the cutesy style and cartoony characters and animals, being frustrated by not being able to do anything. Or, perhaps they have exactly the right mentality and will just do whatever they want. To be honest, I can't tell. It's just that so much of the game seems to be counter-intuitive.

And, and this just bugged me, it's just point and click. That's it. That just kind of annoyed me, from a company that had a game involving cutting people up and sewing them back together.

Story: 7/10
For me, the story was far too childish to enjoy, and I have been known to be pretty childish at times. However, considering that the games target audience was probably younger than myself, I won't hold it too much against it. Beyond that, there's not too much wrong. The characters were at least fairly amusing, and the stories didn't feel like they were thrown together in 10 minutes, but I just didn't care for them.

Graphics/Sound: 8/10
The graphics were very well done, and the music/sound effects were very pleasant to the ear. I guess my biggest complaint would be that the top screen was used very poorly. They attempted to make it show what your character was thinking, but a lot of times it didn't add anything really, and it was way too easy to click on without noticing you've even thought something. Also you had a very limited range of expressions, which strangely seemed to not include happy. Other than that, well done.

Replay Value: Low
While the game does offer bonus episodes, they are really not that interesting. Also there is the point of the game, which is to touch many things in the game. There are exactly 50 things which are given a star rating for no apparent reason, and are very easy to find. The only bonus these give, though, are a special screen and a song on your radio. I finished them at the same time I finished the last bonus episode section. It took me probably about 10 hours to complete the whole game, including times where I just wandered around, seeing apparently nothing I could do.

I say that if you wanted to get this for a young child it is worth it, but definitely don't expect to get too much out of it yourself. You'll only be as disappointed as I was.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/06/06