Unsolved Crimes
A detective game that relies on deduction as much as evidence
Tags: Unsolved Crimes Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Nov 13th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsolved Crimes (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Adventure | No | ||
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I’m not usually a fan boy for anything except early 1990’s Washington D.C. indie rock. Now that being said, I love Nintendo. Not just for their Disney-esque characters that are as iconic for my generation as the Mouse was for the theater generation, but because they’re newest systems have returned adventure games to the masses. Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk, and others have brought the genre to a new prominence on the DS, and the Wii has given us Zack and Wiki. I love point and click adventure games, and all of these have been fantastic. The new Unsolved Crimes on the DS takes it cue from Hotel Dusk and riffs on the 1970s cop show.
Before your expectations come to a boil, let me deflate this a little bit. Where Hotel Dusk used a pastiche of noir to craft a really intense story, Unsolved Crimes give you a handful of clichés. This is the weekly cop drama, not the Maltese Falcon. Deal with it; it doesn’t detract from what is actually a pretty unique take on the genre.
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While most point and click adventures rely on the collection of items to solve a later puzzle, Unsolved Crimes has you looking for items to deduce facts about the case you are working on. The set up is pretty simple: you get a courtroom animation of the murder, then given a rundown of the circumstances and the various suspects and evidence. Then you look for items and answer questions whose answers are based upon evidence you’ve found. The system isn’t perfect, and trial and error will get some lazy players through, but they’re missing the point.
One thing that Unsolved Crimes does really well is that it doesn’t ever go for an unintuitive solution, every case has a pretty logical progression. The few times I was stuck I just hadn’t seen a small detail. I think that would be one big complaint, as the screen of the DS does not lend itself it picking up small details. It isn’t terrible once you use the zoom, but the small detail problem only comes up a few times, so it is a little hard to train yourself to remember the functions.
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While most of the action is centered on the individual cases, but there is a more dramatic story that builds around your partner in the homicide division. I won’t spoil it, but it is a nice nod to the ramp up to Emmy season storylines that police dramas use.
The power of Unsolved Crimes is that it effectively uses a genre without relying on convention. The point and click adventure is a well tread road, and there boxes of bargainware that will testify to how lame it can get. Unsolved Crimes is pretty refreshing, but it isn’t perfect. The 70s style seems to be an excuse for crappy dialogue, and a lot of the animations get annoying rather quickly.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ The emphasis on deduction might do more for your brain than doing addition for five minutes everyday |
8.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Dialog might be a little hackneyed for story obsessed players. - DS isn't suited to the level of details included with some crime scenes. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| This is a solid adventure game, if you have ever enjoyed a point and click game, this is a must play. | |
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Tags: Unsolved Crimes
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Nov 13th, 2008 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
