Short, but sweet, but TOO short
Story – While reviewing the story, I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum. The main character is Ashley Robbins. She is a day-before-14-year-old girl who lives with her aunt, Jessica because her parents are dead, or so she believes. Then, Jessica tells her that her father is alive, living at Blood Edward Island off the coast of Seattle, Washington. They travel to this island, which has a mysterious past about a mysterious family. Throughout the game Jessica will disappear, Ashley will meet a boy who’s been dead for 57 years, and she will meet two people who claim to be her father. The story is one of the strongest aspects of this game. You’ll want to keep playing just to find out the mysteries of this intriguing plot.
Gameplay – For general moving around in this game, you’ll be looking at the bottom screen, which has an overhead view. Then, there are certain spots that you can investigate. The top screen shows the spot that you can investigate, and then you tap an icon on the touch screen to get a close up there. You can then proceed to touch different objects, finding out about them, and you can also sometimes find useful objects. This investigative type gameplay is very simple to do, yet quite fun. There are some touch screen puzzles and other things that require a bit of thinking and/or coordination, however. Though most of these work fine, a few of the coordination ones got a little bit frustrating. It seemed like the controls weren’t tweaked in them, which mad it quite difficult (in a bad way) to complete. There only a few spots like this, and the rest of the gameplay is quite good. As far as action goes, this game has none whatsoever, except in cut scenes. I didn’t miss it that much though, and had just as much fun investigating the game world, as I would have beating up bad guys in a anime fighter (you probably shouldn’t compare those two things, actually!) There is one more thing that I should mention about the gameplay, and that is the Dual Trace System (DTS). The DTS is your “weapon” for investigating. It essentially looks exactly like a Nintendo DS. You can, among other things, use it to take pictures, read DTS cards, which give you info, and save your game. I thought it was quite clever and somewhat humorous that they implemented the actual DS into the game. Graphics – The graphics are a mixture of good and bad. When the touch screen is at the overhead view of Ashley walking around, the graphics definitely could’ve been better. They are just not very clear, and, with the DS’s power, you would’ve thought they could’ve been made better. Ashley’s person is especially poor to look at during this view. However, when you are investigating things up close, the graphics aren’t that bad, but they are not spectacular, either. One decent thing about the visuals in this game is the character art and cut scenes. The character art comes into play during the dialogue and is very nice, ALMOST having an anime look to it. The cut scenes are just still pictures moving around (barely moving around, actually), and use the same art style.
Sound/Music – At three different points during the game, the music can be described as one of three things: emotional, inquisitive, or mysterious. This type of music fits the game very well. Piano is the main instrument used in the tunes and in my opinion, for this type of video game anyways, is a big plus. The piano feature that plays while the credits roll is especially pleasing. A negative thing about the music, though, is that sometimes it seems like there isn’t any playing. Either this, or I was so drawn into the game I just didn’t notice it. Whatever it was, I would’ve cared for more prominent music.
Value – The value of this game is definitely its weakest point. I beat the game in around 4 hours, 30 minutes. There are 6 different chapters, so that’s about 45 minutes per chapter. Along with being short, there is also no unlockables really at all. This is a big downside, as, though the main game is fun the first time, I haven’t felt compelled to play through it again. To be fair, I have heard that there are some differences in the story the second time through, but have not cared to find out what they are. Basically, this game has no replay value at all. I would for sure recommend renting it over buying it. If you don’t have a way too rent it, make sure you are willing to pay however much money for only 4-6 hours of gameplay.