Review Touch Detective Developer: SUCCESS / BeeWorks Publisher: Atlus Genre: Adventure Release Date: October 2006 Platform: Review by Randy Sluganski November 3, 2006		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

There have been some nice adventure games released for the Nintendo DS – Trace Memory, Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Lost in Blue - and now Touch Detective can be added to this growing list.

Whereas Phoenix Wright was immediately likeable due to its outrageous quirkiness, Touch Detective, while almost as idiosyncratic, does take some time to grow on you but eventually you will be won over by the charming characters and anime-like graphics.

Originally released in Japan as Osawari Tantei Ozawa Rina, Touch Detective features Mackenzie, a young pre-teen (?) girl who solves mysteries in her home town; reminiscent of Animal Crossing as populated by both humans and talking animals. Mackenzie has inherited the family detective agency from her late father and with the help of her robot butler Cromwell and her investigative assistant Funghi must solve four cases to be accepted into the prestigious Great Detective Society. The cases must be progressively solved and you cannot advance to the next case until the previous one has been completed. There are also numerous mini-mysteries that can be solved – though it is not necessary – between each case.

Touch Detective is pure old-school point-and-click with scads of inventory items, some of which can be combined, dialogue trees and lots and lots of puzzles. It is, as you may have already guessed, geared towards the younger or novice adventure gamer, but those who enjoy their games on the go should also find it enjoyable.

Overall, there are only six main areas to explore which could have been monotonous – a Condominium, Shopping Plaza, Planetarium, Park, Circus Tent & Mackenzie’s house – but the developers have done an admirable job of continually moving the characters around and adding subsections to keep the areas fresh.

The cases are pretty simplistic on the surface: find a missing friend, discover who is stealing dreams, etc., but each one soon becomes convoluted and can take a few hours to complete. There is also, surprisingly, some nice character development in the game and by the time you have finished you will feel as though you are friends with each character.

The puzzles are a mixed bag and while some are creative there are a few that are totally outlandish. For example (small spoiler alert), one puzzle solution has you using an air pump to inflate the condominium’s landlady – who incidentally is a chicken. While the puzzle was not difficult to solve, especially as the chicken feathers on the air pump were an obvious clue, I’m still wondering even after finishing the game why anyone would ever think to inflate the landlady in the first place especially as she wasn’t an inflatable rubber chicken which would at least have made some sense (and I don’t even want to think about where the hose was inserted to inflate her).

While such solutions are forgivable, a larger problem is that there are no hot spots in the game which leads to the player scrolling the cursor across every screen and clicking on everything in site hoping to find new items or newly activated areas. This oversight is especially magnified due to the small DS screen making it difficult to identify some items. I’m not sure what the developers were thinking by not including hot spots, but their inclusion would not have made the game any easier, just less frustrating.

While Touch Detective is a solid game in its own right, it fails to take advantage of the capabilities of the extra DS screen and microphone. Phoenix Wright livened up the proceedings by allowing you to yell ‘Objection!’ into the microphone, Lost in Blue you had to blow into the microphone to start a fire (which, believe me, was sometimes the most exciting part of the game), but Touch Detective never utilizes the microphone. The top screen is never really used for anything other than revealing Mackenzie’s sarcastic, usually humorous, thoughts but they fade out so quickly that it is often difficult to read them before they have disappeared from the screen.

As for the ‘touch’ in Touch Detective, there are a total of 50 items in the game, including the bonus missions, that when touched are added to Mackenzie’s Touch List which can then be accessed from the main menu. But other than allowing you to access bonus artwork, there seems to be no other reason for the Touch List to exist. It should have been used to help you identify similar items in the game as clues, instead it is a wasted gimmick.

As Mackenzie completes cases and bonus episodes, her Investigation Report will begin to fill up with her thoughts on each case and if every case and bonus episode is completed, this also will open bonus artwork and soundtracks. While the game’s soundtracks are not anything you will be humming afterwards, it is pleasantly surprising how many different and well done soundtracks can be fit into such a small game.

Two of the characters who can help Mackenzie are Cromwell, the family butler who not only offers advice, but can also repair items and her sidekick/pet, Funghi a walking mushroom that, when touched, can fit into some tight places and find clues. My problem with this character is not that it is unrealistic – heck, many adventure games feature strange creatures and items – but every time I saw it walking across the screen it reminded me not so much of a walking mushroom as it did a walking….well, let’s keep this review PG rated. Just use your imagination.

Overall, Touch Detective is an occasionally amusing game that can at times be involving. I did ask a few younger teenagers to try it and they seemed to enjoy it much more than an old geezer like myself and I think it would make a great gift or stocking stuffer for the younger gamer. It would be recommended though, if there is a sequel, to take full advantage of the capabilities of the DS.

Finally a big tap of the hat to Atlus for their devotion in continuing to bring adventure games like Rule of Rose and Touch Detective to North America.

Final Grade: C+ (Bump it up a letter grade if you’re a teen or pre-teen) (find out more about our grading system)

If you liked this game, then Play: Animal Crossing Watch: The Cartoon Network