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.