This is a downloadable text adventure game where you play as two police detectives in Tokyo.  You’ll crack cold cases, which are crimes that haven’t been solved in a long time.  Aside from reading a lot, you’ll interview suspects and witnesses, as well as investigate crime scenes using the 3DS touch screen and stylus.

The gameplay comes in the form of the interviews and crime scene investigations.  When you interview people, sometimes you’ll be prompted with several choices. You must choose the right one to proceed.  This will test how well you remember names, as well as locations and other clues about what you’ve read and surmised.  If you miss, a meter will go down, and when it’s depleted, it’s Game Over.  Sometimes you must also investigate crime scene photos by tapping on them with the touch screen to gather clues.  Later on, you may have to tap on something in the crime photos and only have one chance to click on the right thing, so be careful!

The problem with this game is that when you are presented with choices in the interviews, you can see profiles of the suspects and witnesses, and can look at previous dialog entries, but there isn’t an easy way to look up clues and information to make the correct choices.  Which is fine if you have played the game recently and can remember names well, but can be hard if you haven’t played the game in a while. Also, the characters are very bland and uninteresting.

What really surprised me is how short this game is.  I solved the first case in about an hour, and then the credits started rolling.  I thought they were just doing some intro credits, and then the rest of the game would start, but nope, that was it.  I tried to look up on the Internet to see if this was going to be one of those episodic games, but I couldn’t find any indication that it would be.  But considering how short this case was, and how they left it off with another mystery to solve, I figure it HAS to be episodic. Whether or not the makers of the game do another one is a different story altogether, as I don’t know that yet.  One interesting thing about this game was it was made by the same folks who did Hotel Dusk, an old DS game that has quite the cult following.  So if you enjoyed that game, you may want to check this one out.  Otherwise, this game is too short and bland to be worth a look.

Kid Factor:

Chase: Cold Case Investigations -Distant Memories- is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Language, Mild Violence, and Use of Tobacco. For a game about a murder mystery, there is surprisingly no blood, and violence is only referred to in the text.  I don’t remember reading too much bad language, but the main male detective smokes like a chimney and isn’t very nice to his female partner detective sometimes.  Reading skill is needed, of course.  I’d say if you think your kids are old enough to read murder mystery novels and crime drama TV shows, they’ll be OK with this game, too.

Tags: Game Reviews