Spending Time with Unsolved Crimes

A number of adventure titles for the Nintendo DS have tried, with varying degrees of success, to replicate real-world settings. Phoenix Wright thrived outside of the courtroom, where players we asked to locate blood stains, and dust crime scenes for fingerprints. However, once litigation ensued, the game became a highly illogical approximation of our justice system. Professor Layton and the Curious Village was a compelling puzzle game, but the adventure was hopelessly shallow, and only served to move the player to the next conundrum. When we first heard that Unsolved Crimes was going to try to simulate homicide detective procedure on the underpowered DS hardware, we were initially skeptical.

                                            When all else fails, bring Catherine Tramell in for interrogation.

In the game, players assume the role of a rookie homicide detective in New York City, circa 1976. The setting is used for more than mere urban grittiness- players must investigate each murder scene without the benefit of computer or forensic technology. Each of the game’s twelve cases begins with a briefing as your superior gives you the known facts of the case. Players are then allowed to view evidence and suspect profiles complete with a very brief testimony. Evidence is presented as three-dimensional, scalable objects; players can easily rotate the figure using the DS’s touch screen, as vital information is almost always obscured. Once background data is gathered, the investigation moves to the crime scene. Here, the bottom screen of the DS is used to convey a first-person perspective, as the player searches the environment for clues. Using the stylus, players tap on items of interest, as they slowly unravel clues about the murder.

                                            We told him not to play ball in the house; now he’s a mere chalk-line

Your in-game assistant, Marcy Blake, will guide you through each case, offering multiple-choice hypotheses at pivotal points in the games narrative. We found the game genuinely rewarding as we poked around crime scenes looking for clues. Once, a decent amount of information is procured, players are required to make a deductive statement to advance play. However, summarizing these facts via a simplistic quiz disrupted the realistic flow of the game’s narrative. Occasionally, the game will challenge players to enter a pivotal element in the murder investigation via text entry. Typical with the genre, Unsolved Crimes‘ puzzles are only engaging once; repeated playthroughs fail to offer the feeling of discovery and accomplishment.