Customer Reviews

Touch Detective

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Quite simply, it's great, though a bit on the challenging side. Gorgeous art style and some great music come together for an atmospheric title, and one that, despite it's 'rated 'E' for everyone' approach, will appeal to adults as well as kids. It's not without some light frustration, but the good far outweighs the bad.

Ignore the mediocre reviews and pick this one up. Replay value is in the four different cases, as well as some unlockable minigames and a 'touch' list. If you like adventure titles like Phoenix Wright and Trace Memory (or Maniac Mansion, for that matter) then you'll really dig this game.

A good solid four stars.

I'm an "older" person who enjoys handheld video games. However I consider myself a novice. After receiving the DS, I've tried several games. I absolutely loved this one. It was not too hard, and it was not too easy. It doesn't have the jumping around as the Mario games, and there is no time limit involved which is something I prefer. You can pick it up from where you left off with little frustration.

It is very cute. I like the Tamagotchi game, and this has a certain similar cuteness. At times the antics of the characters made me laugh out loud.

I used the stylus throughout the game, and was amazed at the smoothness of the movement.

Solving the four stories is relatively quick, and I am not too sure of the replay value. However, it was an enjoyable weeks worth of play, and for about four dollars a day I consider the money well spent.

This would probably be good for a child of 9 or above. The reading is fairly minimal and it is mostly cartoonish comments that the characters make.

If you like Japanese Manga, you will probably enjoy this game. The humor is much the same as the "chibi" characters in Manga.

This is a fun game to play. I am on the 2nd mystery to solve. I do love these types of games. This one is sort of like Trace Memory, alot of reading to do in it. I am an adult woman. My 11yr. old son says it doesnt think he would want to play it though.

This is a fun game. I do enjoy puzzles, including mysteries. This time I feel like being very cut and dry; I shall give you the cons and pros in that order.


Cons:

1. Replayability. As sad as it is for me to say, I often try to avoid "Detective" games because once you solve the mysteries, there's little to no replayability. This one is no exception: once you complete the four main mysteries, your best chance of replayability is in the Bonus episode. Even that is limited.

2. Frustration. You can get stuck on the simplest things. When you are stuck, it immediately "freezes" gameplay in it's tracks, and you can't do anything. I've been forced to put the game down and go online for help. Quite annoying.

3. Silly cases. While still fun, it's a letdown to not have any "real" mysteries. Basically, you figure out who stole Penelope's dreams (who cares?), How to save an ice fairy, who kidnapped Penelope (again, who cares?), and who assaulted a bunch of *SPOILER COMING UP, YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH* fleas (yet again, who cares?!).

4. Undeveloped characters. There was room for a lot more characters and more intricate cases. Just the fact that this opportunity was there, and the developers didn't sieze it, makes me ill. I got a little tired of just solving things for Penelope.


Pros:

1. Cute characters. All of them are comical. All of them are funny. All of them are interesting. Even Penelope, who I became tired of. The main characters are: Mackenzie (the girl you control), Funghi (Mackenzie's pet and assistant, follows you around), Chloe (a girl who rivals you. Sometimes she helps, other times she just gets in the way. She gets into a lot of funny situations though *wink, wink*), and Penelope (the girl always in dire need of your services. Likes bananas. A lot).

2. Sufficient problem solving skills required. While I'm not sure younger kids have the patience to enjoy this, those of the age of 10 to adulthood will probably have fun playing this game (assuming they like mysteries and puzzles).

3. Good music. There are catchy tunes that suit the themes of this game, and the music is very memorable.

4. Good graphics. It's cartoonish, but not in a way that's too childish; more like a Japanese anime if you understand what I mean.


Conclusion: Overall this is an excellent game; it's major problem only being lack of replayability. It's well worth the price it's currently at ($24.99), but I wouldn't go too much higher than that. As long as it stays around it's current price, I recommend this game for those who like to exercise their craniums.

It's a very fun game. If you enjoy detective type of game, you'll enjoy this one. It's pretty short though. It only took me three days to beat it. However, I sure had fun during the process. There's some humor in it, too. Chloe is a pretty funny character. The graphic is pretty and the music is great.

The DS seems to be the perfect platform for point-and-click adventures, and it's not a surprise to find another quirky mystery game making its way into the library. As far as Touch Detective goes, however, do not expect it to be as compelling as the Phoenix Wright series. Instead, what you would get is a somewhat nonsensical plot involving missing dreams, relocating aliens and an assault case involving fleas.

Gameplay in Touch Detective is as simple as it gets. You use the stylus to perform every action, which you will probably guess anyway from the game's title. These actions will include talking to people (and animals), picking up items, showing items, moving from one place to another, and the likes. When you pick up an item, you can also use the stylus to further examine it. All these are done in the name of finding clues, or rather, cues, to unlock the next event. The game is also pretty linear when it comes to unlock events, as with most adventure games. Unfortunately, the clues to unlock further events are usually non-descript, so expect to experience plenty of standstill if you aren't good in exploring every nook and cranny in the various corners of the town.

Playing as a successor to a detective agency, your character, MacKenzie, will come across some weird cases. Solving a case will unlock the next one, up to a total of four episodes. Upon completion of the last episode, a bonus mission will also be unlocked. This adds some length to a rather short game - if you are very thorough in your investigation, you could probably complete the four episodes in about three to four hours. Apart from just playing through the story, the game also has some collection-based side quests to boot. For example, there's a Investigation Report that details several actions that you will encounter during the game. Many of these options are optional, but as long as you manage to complete all the missions, including the bonus one, you should be able to fill up all five pages of this report.

Another collection-based side quest is the Touch List. There are a total of 50 "touchable" items scattered in the five locations in this game. Touching them with your stylus will add them to the list. The tricky thing here is that some items can only be touched after some actions are performed, so it's not exactly a straight forward, touch-and-go affair. Players who like 100% completion on the games will therefore find more things to do on top of the usual mystery-solving.

The graphics style in Touch Detective looks very much like a Japanese manga. Quirky character designs are blended well with slightly dark shades of colors to provide an unusually gothic feel to the game. This may not good down well with some gamers, but otherwise, it's a bold move that make the game looks different from other adventure games. This itself is a plus point in my opinion. Sound wise, it's pretty much standard fare here. You may, however, find it worthwhile to access the in-game Jukebox to listen to the scores again if you enjoy anime-style audios.

Overall, Touch Detective isn't exactly a great title. It places too much reliance on wild guesses rather than educated deduction. The intentionally silly missions also give the game less credit than it should receive. The biggest problem, however, is that as a detective story, the cases aren't intriguing enough, if at all, for a player with less patience to carry on with it. That said, the more patient players may still find this a neat little title to bring on the road despite its flaws. As for the rest, they should probably give this a miss.

To me, this game was seriously disappointing. So disappointing, I didn't finish the second case before setting it down forever.

I was highly entertained - at first. It's cute, funny, and going around clicking on things for a new DS user was highly entertaining. However, it quickly got older.

1. You can't skip through the horrendously long dialog - ever. Even after you've heard it about a million times because you're clicking on people hopelessly in frustration unable to figure out what to do.

2. I found myself looking for an internet walk through, yes, on this simplistic game. I couldn't figure out what to click and wandering around hopelessly for thirty minutes reading over dialog you've read a thousand times just gets too frustrating even for my typical patience level.

3. Possible Spolier - There seemed to be a glich in the second story in which I talked to the wrong person at the wrong time and then I could never get a ticket into the planetarium. After that, I just couldn't take it any more and gave up.

4. The places and people never change. For each case, from my understanding, it's all the exact same tiny few places. I'm not a big gamer, but I like a world bigger than three feet.

I let a friend borrow it and thus far she is enjoying it more than me.

Just to help this review - I'm a college-age female and this is my first gaming console, although I've played the PS2 quite a bit. Maybe it's really a hit or miss but I don't really recommend it for anyone but someone with a high patience level. A REALLY high patience level.

This is my new favorite series! played these games in the wrong order and I would recommend playing this one before 2 1/2 because there were some extra features and improvements made into 2 1/2.
This game is adorable in the typical Atlus style, which, if you're unfamiliar with it, is cute anime-like characters with some strange personalities. They have a range of expressions, from exclamation points to hopping up and down in anger. The format is 3D and the title character, Mackenzie walks wherever you point to with the stylus. There are several areas on a map, office, apartments, and shopping center to begin with where you will find the rest of the cast. Mackenzie "touches" things (tap with the stylus) to examine them, add them to her list, or interact with them.
There are four episodes, each with a new case to solve complete with side tasks.
One of the best aspects of the game is Mackenzie's running sarcastic commentary thought-bubble on the screen above. I wouldn't recommend this for kids because some of the jokes are directed at adults and some of the puzzles require the persistance to do the constant back and forth work of re-interviewing people and checking the same spots. Upon completion, you are rewarded with the bonus episode that consists of small mini-tasks to solve such as hide-and-seek, finding ingredients, and solving problems. The game is complete when you have filled in your 50 item touch list, 4 cases, and 4 pages of mini-tasks. I hope they will release more in this series, look to Japan for that.
Replay? Yes becuae it's so charmingly cute.
Ages? Depends on maturity, most kids won't have the patience, won't appreciate the graphics, and won't understand many of the words and jokes -definitly not for kids in the single digit age group.
Is it for you? If you only like certain genres of games -no. There's no fighting, no racing, no learning for small kids...

In "Touch Detective", a girl named Mackenzie goes around her neighborhood solving various mysteries by talking to people and gathering clues. This game is entertaining although at times it can get a bit frustrating because one doesn't know what to do next. Overall, it's a five because the mysteries are fun to solve and a bit of a challenge is a good thing for video games because it keeps them interesting.

The characters have their own personalities and stories, which makes the game fun. Very good game!

Yes, finally! I've been wanting to play this game for ages! It just looks so cute, and I love adventure games, so I've been looking forward to this one for awhile. It took me so long to get my hands on it though simply because I haven't been able to afford it for awhile and I had a bunch of other games in my backlog that I needed to play. Well, now that I've played it, let's just say that it's quite different from my original expectations...

Graphics (score 8/10): Graphics are very cutely drawn (they look like they came out of an illustrated storybook). The in-game graphics are crisp, clear, and nicely colored. Not much to say here.

Music (score 7/10): There's no voice acting, but the game does have your standard musical backgrounds. Most of them are decent but not terribly memorable, but there are some exceptions here and there. For example, the music that plays in the planetarium is quite kooky. There are a few in-game sound effects here and there, but nothing special.

Characters (score 8/10): Well, there is an interesting cast of characters in this game. I think all of them could be described as "quirky" to say the least. First, you have your main character, Mackenzie, who frequently looks like she has haunted eyes. She's probably the most normal character in the game. Then there's her butler, Cromwell, who is oddly creepy and condescending - yet simultaneously supportive of Mackenzie. The other two main characters are Penelope (Mackenzie's sweet-natured friend who has a strange obsession with bananas) and Chloe (Mackenzie's grumpy friend who's always trying to steal her detective cases from her). The rest of the townspeople are pretty strange. Many of the adults look like zombies and there are also people who are anthropomorphic animals (like Dover the yellow shark man who eats cake all the time). The game never explains this madness. Well, overall, I can't really say that the characters are bad (at least they have decently developed personalities) but mostly they are just weird.

Story (score 8/10): Just let me say that this game turned out nothing like I was expecting. I'm already pretty experienced when it comes to adventure games on the DS, and I was expecting this game to be sort of like a child-friendly version of the many detective-themed point and click adventure games on DS that I've already played (Jake Hunter, Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright, etc.). In other words, I was expecting a cutesy version of detective cases, such as Mackenzie finding her friend's lost cat or something like that after poking around town. What I got was sort of like that, yet completely different. Really, this game is more of a surreal experience than the realistic detective game I was expecting. Let me give you an example. There is a scene where Mackenzie has to enter the dream world by huffing some dream mushrooms wrapped in a paper bag made of herbs and heated to release fumes in order to catch a thief who's wearing a giant paper bag who has stolen her friend's dream; she does this by inflating an anthropomorphic duck woman who's the landlord of an apartment building by inflating her with an air pump and then literally popping her using a teddy bear with a sharp metal horn on its head so that she flies across the sky and lands on the thief. Yes, really, those things happened. And that's just a tiny portion of this game. Well, you may be wondering, is the story actually any good? Um, it depends on what you mean by "good". It's certainly weird. It was weird enough to be entertaining such that I kept wanting to play just to see what would happen next. I can't say that the story is particularly deep or emotionally gripping (and there are some things that are left unexplained, like what happened to Mackenzie's parents), but it's certainly interesting to experience, to say the least... So really, it's not the emotional grip of the story that keeps you involved (because their isn't much emotional grip); it's more that you keep playing to see what maddening middle finger to reality that the story will present you with next. Is this good? Well, that depends on whether that sounds appealing to you or not. If you enjoy trippy games, then this might be the one for you. Once I got used to it, I enjoyed myself quite a bit. Just don't go into this expecting a logic-based detective game.

Gameplay (score 7/10): This is a bit of a catch-all category for me. Touch Detective is your fairly standard point and click adventure game. You spend your time moving around, talking to people, and tapping the screen to investigate objects. Pretty basic. One small complaint I have is that you tap the screen to move your character around, and she can sometimes get stuck on the environment to where you must tap a slightly different spot to get her to move. Overall, though, it's not a terrible problem and most of the controls work just fine. As for the difficulty level, sometimes it's difficult to figure out how to solve problems or what to do next because of what I mentioned in the story section: this game and reality do not often meet. Sometimes the things you need to do are so illogical that it takes you awhile to realize that you even need to do it. For example, you fix a butterfly net with a hole in it by shoving it into a spider web. It took me ages to figure this out because it's so stupid - if you tried that in real life it wouldn't plug up the hole, it'd just get an icky spider web on your net. I eventually just found it by accident. As it is though, I only had to consult a guide once when I got stuck, so the game isn't freakishly hard or anything. Basically, once you start to comprehend the strange logic of this game, it becomes easier to do what you need to do.

Overall (score 8/10): NOTE this score is not an average; it's my subjective overall score. Well, even though this game was nothing like I was expecting, I still liked it. It's a really good surrealist piece of artistic medium as well as a fun game to play. If you have any interest in point and click adventure games, you might want to give Touch Detective a try. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the sequel!