Touch Detective subscribes wholeheartedly to the theory that adventure games should require players to pick up every item, run back and forth and talk to every single person over and over again, and try to use every item on every person or other object you find until something-anything-works. Not that any of these puzzles make a lick of logical sense, nor does the game hint to you what you might need at any time. But every now and again, that air pump or that teddy bear sitting in your room will be the exact item you need for the next section. Nine times out of 10, what you tap won't be anything. This is one of those dyed-in-the-wool pixel hunts that requires you to tap around every section of a screen until you find something you can pick up. It's a mechanically sound gameplay system, but the way in which the game forces you into constant absurd leaps of logic to solve puzzles and situations just about ruins the fun. This is about as specific a clue as you will ever find in this game. Sometimes you need to do this to find hidden evidence or items on an object. Once it's in your inventory, you just tap it again on the inventory screen to bring it up. Tapping the screen makes Mackenzie walk to that point, and likewise, whenever you see an item or an object that looks as if it might belong in your inventory, you simply tap it to pick it up. You start out with only a few locations on the map unlocked, but as you complete more cases, eventually you'll visit every area, including a bustling shopping area, a picturesque park, a creepy planetarium, and the aforementioned condominium. Solving mysteries mostly involves wandering around the town to the various searchable locations. It's original-looking art design that sets a nice mood for each case, and the soundtrack complements these scenes equally well. The game has a nice look to it as well, with characters and scenery that don't fall into the usual generic anime categories. The dialogue is filled with colorfully goofy moments and more uses of "." than anything since Golgo 13, and the characters-while all decidedly cartoony-are likeable enough to want to stick with throughout the adventure. Some of this stuff falls under the "weird for the sake of weird" anime trappings that a lot of these games tend to, but it's forgivable simply for the fact that the characters and dialogue are surprisingly endearing.
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No, Mackenzie's cases take a decidedly oddball slant, tasking you with discovering why Penelope can't dream anymore, or how to save a snow fairy from certain doom in the middle of spring.
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But in a game this patently whimsical, it wouldn't make much sense to have you solving gritty murders or finding jade monkeys before the next full moon, or what have you. Oh, and there's a creepy fortune-teller, a chicken-lady condominium landlord, a reticent organ grinder, a giant shark-man who won't stop eating pastries, and a bunch of haunting skeleton people who look like something out of Edvard Munch's "The Scream."Īs a detective, your job is to, of course, solve cases. Mackenzie's main rival is a hot-headed, raven-haired chick named Chloe who always finds ways to interfere in her investigations Funghi is Mackenzie's mushroom-man pet that follows her around wherever she goes and periodically takes part in puzzle-solving and just about every case in the game seems to revolve around Mackenzie's dingbat friend Penelope.
These two are no stranger than the citizens of their town-if anything, they're normal in comparison. Mackenzie is a detective, straight up, and Cromwell is effectively her manservant. You get the impression that Cromwell is sort of a parent type and Mackenzie is his ward, but this isn't one of those Inspector Gadget scenarios where the adult is a bumbling fool that everyone thinks is in charge, and the kid does all the work. This bulging-eyed blonde lives in a house with a prim and proper butler type named Cromwell. Touch Detective centers around a strange detective agency run by a young girl named Mackenzie.
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It starts out promisingly enough, with some cute, bizarre characters and a series of strange mysteries to solve via the DS's touch screen but more than any other adventure game on the DS to date, Touch Detective suffers from archaic adventure game puzzle-solving, forcing you to pixel hunt and combine items until you're completely and utterly bored with the whole thing. With the exception of last year's delightfully crazy Phoenix Wright, most of the attempts to bring adventure games to the DS haven't quite panned out, either because of short length, inadequate story, or off-kilter mechanics. One of the things the Nintendo DS has been heralded for is its ability to handle decidedly PC-oriented genres such as strategy and adventure games.
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