Text-y point-and-click adventure games are making a comeback on Nintendo's can-do handheld. With hits like Ace Attorney and Hotel Dusk along with lesser titles like Touch Detective, the time is right for solving mysteries on the DS, which makes room for some very obscure, if long running, titles to be localized for the first time.
That brings GamesRadar to Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles, the first US release of a Japanese detective series that is more than 20 years old (it premiered on the Famicom Disk System!), which they recently took for a spin.
411mania talks about this week's game releases. Highlights include Cross Edge, Yosumin!, Crimson Gem Saga, Zenonia, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Jake Hunter Detective Story: Memories of the Past, Gyakuten Kenji, and Days of Memories 3.
I strongly encourage everyone to at least take a look at..nay pick up Cross-Edge. I would say that the game does give fan service by bringing in some characters many people may know as well as some many may not know; yet it also has an addictive battle system and great music to boot. So again I strongly advise those looking for an RPG to pick this up.
Alan Kim reports:
''Although we're big fans of point-and-tap whodunit games like the Phoenix Wright series, we can't quite get behind private detective Jake Hunter. Detective Chronicles has a ton of potential, but ham-handed presentation and "so simple a baby could do it" hand-holding make this gumshoe seem more like a goofball.
There are three cases for you to play through, all of which involve you going to a crime scene, talking to everyone until you learn the needed clues, and then going back to your office and puffing down cancer sticks and reviewing the day's events (via a neat quiz-style game in which you recall the details) until the facts become clear. This is literally true - Jake thinks when he smokes, so he's at his most brilliant when his alveoli are crying for mercy.''
Alisha Karabinus reports:
''In a platform game, it's important that you be able to actually move from one platform to the next. Action game? It's similarly important that you be able to fight and move, in order to progress through the game. Few people would argue those points -- so why is the text in a text adventure often less than great?
Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles could have been a great game. The potential is there, and there are a lot of great little touches. Unfortunately, the localized script is sloppy, and that, combined with the missing cases, makes this much more a miss than a hit.''
