The end doesn't justify the means.
I just recently finished episode one of five in the Blue Toad saga. In the beginning of the game you get to chose from a selection of four Blue Toad detectives. The choice you make isn't story-altering or relevant to the story at all. And there is no initial information about each detective, just a brief sentence describing one of the detectives accomplishments, as well as their name.
You can have up to four player play the episode at once, however I only played solo.
The game is guided by narration that describes what is going on in the game, almost like reading from a book, since you cannot control you character's movements or actions. You character is an avatar that you see every so often in between dialog, giving a simple nod or gesture, since he or she is mute and doesn't talk.
You arrive in Little Riddle and find that the mayor has been murdered. You then find the mayors diary and read about possible four suspects.
As you progress through the game you are able to pick different selections from an overhead map view of which location you would like to go to. After you pick a location a cut-scene begins between you and another resident of Little Riddle (mostly one of the suspect) converge into dialog which will eventually lead to a puzzle you have to solve.
The puzzles are simple and range from matching, to word-deciphering and mathematics. You are graded on how fast you complete the puzzle as well as how many times you mess up. At the end of each puzzles solution you are given one of thee medals depending on how fast you completed it. Gold, silver and bronze.
These medals mean nothing really, aside from at the end when you are given an overall medal for how well you did. Even that, however, doesn't reward you with anything except for the trophy. I can see however how this would be more fun, competition-wise.
After about 10 or 12 short puzzles you are asked to decide which suspect did it. And even thought the puzzles are easy you do have to pay attention to dialog and hints also in order to come to a correct conclusion.
This games biggest downfall is how short it is. It's over $7 on PSN and takes about 10 minutes to complete. That's like paying 50 cents a minute to play this game. It wasn't very fun either, because as I said you can't control your character, so you have to just watch the cut-scenes and answer a puzzle every now and then until the game ends. And to get a gold medal in the puzzles you normally have to complete them in under 2 minutes, which means the developers know that the puzzles don't take that long, and there's no exploring or anything so.......it's just a straight run through.
The puzzles never change either, so once you complete them and get the right answer, there is no point replaying the game unless you want the trophies.
The problem is the price. If they game was about $3 or maybe even $4 then it would make the game better because I'd feel like I'd be getting my moneys worth. But it's almost doubled that, so by the time you finish you'll really feel let-down.