Touch Detective Review

Platform: Nintendo DS
ERSB: E10+
Genre: Adventure
Number of Players: 1
Publisher: Atlus
Release Date: US 10/10/2006
Official Website
Writer: Trina

Rating: 7.0

Atlus is known for creating games that are fun and innovative. They have experience creating great DS titles like Bomberman and Contact. In Touch Detective you play Mackenzie. Mackenzie inherited the family business of detective work. She is trying to gain admittance into the Prestigious Great Detective Society. Mackenzie lives with her butler, Cromwell, who is very much akin to Alfred from Batman. He is always there to assist her, offer a hint, or make her something that MacGyver would use. Mackenzie is joined by her pet Funghi who is useful in some situations. Mackenzie gets four cases to work on. Mostly all through her very dramatic friend Penelope while Chloe believes she is a detective and always tries to one-up Mackenzie. The world itself is made of many unique characters so make sure you speak to all of them.

Graphics:
The graphics are great. The style of art here is very similar to Tim Burton if he was asked to create a game. The world and the character styles are all very consistent. The colors are bright and vivid.

Controls:
The controls for Touch Detective are pretty easy to use. You use the touch screen/stylus to point and click on various objects and people to investigate. Get used to clicking everywhere! You can access the items that you have picked up in your item list at the bottom of the screen. If you move to the end of an area, you are taken to the map so you can choose the next available area to go to.

Sound:
There is some music in the background of the game. Also one of the characters plays a musical instrument. Many of the sounds work with things that happen in the game.

Flow:
I wanted to love Touch Detective. The artwork is amazing and I am intrigued by titles on the DS that let you be a sleuth. The characters are all well thought out and the conversations you have with these people are hilarious. My main problem with the flow was sometimes the things you had to do to get to the next portion of the case seemed so far reaching. Often I was stuck trying to figure out what to do next, thinking I had spoken to everyone ten times and visited everywhere. Only to find out you had to do something with an item in order to get to the next part of the story. It was extremely frustrating. At times, I just put the game down and wouldn’t come back to it for days.

Fun Factor:
The characters in the game are so well written which makes it fun to speak to them to get further in the case. The cases themselves are fun and have interesting, unique ways to solve them. Unfortunately, because of the high frustration level of some of the cases, it really distracts from the game play.

Female Aspect:
Most of the main characters are female. Mackenzie’s strong, smart, and funny. I think all these characters are great to play. They all add to the story. All the kids seem young, but there aren’t any parents in the story. Most of them have an apartment room to themselves.

Replay Value:
The only drawback to this genre or type of game is there is very little replay value. I cannot see a reason to replay it after you have solved the cases. You don’t get different items. If you are one of those people that must do everything, you could go back and make sure you got everything on your touch list.

An innovative, gorgeous game that has a frustrating drawback. Hopefully future detective-like games will not run into that flaw.