Review: Ghost Trick Phantom Detective
After being trapped at home by mountains of snow today I decided to take the opportunity to spend some quality time with my DS and the new game Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. With Shu Takumi, the creator of the Ace Attorney series, as lead developer I dove in with high hopes for this title. There’s a small corner of my heart that will forever love the Phoenix Wright games and any of the related titles and Ghost Trick, while not a part of the series, is no exception to this. Throughout the game I found myself consumed from time-to-time with a bought of chortles while playing this delightful title.
Sissel
In Ghost Trick you play as Sissel who opens the game by discovering he is dead and that he has no memories of who he is or how he died. His only clue is the young lady detective that is standing by his corpse. He soon discovers that he has powers of the dead and can manipulate objects and travel to four minutes before the death of any person he comes across that has died within the past twenty four hours. With his new powers, Sissel sets out to discover who he is and why he found himself dead that night. He only has a single night to accomplish his goal, but he sets out with determination and along the way he finds himself tangled up in a string of bizarre events and meets a good many interesting people all along the way.
Much like the games in the Ace Attorney series the characters are all quirky oddballs that are each very unique and memorable. The game features that same over-the-top sense of humor that made the Ace Attorney games so enjoyable and as you journey on, solving puzzles and unraveling the overarching plot, you are bound to find yourself laughing heartily throughout.
What really sets Ghost Trick apart from the Ace Attorney series and just about any other game are the mechanics, your ghost powers. It’s hard to change somebody’s fate and prevent their death when you only have four minutes to work on and the only things you can interact with are non-living objects. Just moving around from place to place can pose a challenge as you try to manipulate objects and people to open up pathways for you to travel. The game does help a bit by allowing you to trace phone calls to open up new areas. Once you have traces a call you get to use telephones to warp freely to get between different zones. However, within these zones your means of transport is often limited to jumping from the core of one object to the core of another object. Thankfully, there is a special ghost world view that pauses time and shows you clearly the cores of the objects around you and when you posses the cores what actions you can make that object do. These are all simple actions such as opening and closing an umbrella or rolling a wheel so you have to get really creative if you want to perform any big stunts or change the fate of those around you.
If you do find yourself stuck somewhere the game is pretty good at providing hints to keep you moving on your way. I never felt so frustratingly stuck that I got irritated with the game. Not to say the game is easy. Some of the puzzles can get pretty challenging and I had to start over some puzzles multiple times before I came up with the correct solution, but generally through some tweaking here and there and a bit of luck and I eventually found myself successful.
Ghost Trick took me about 12 hours to complete and like similar games there isn’t a lot of replay value once it’s finished and you know the whole story. However, it has a great cast of characters and an interesting and compelling plot full of turns and twists with fun and challenging puzzles. It’s an excellent game, so if you are a fan of any of the Ace Attorney games or like quirky humor, interesting puzzles and a general good time Ghost Trick is a game I would definitely recommend.
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January 13th, 2011 - 18:13
Cool! It’s up and running!