Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Review (DS)

Some of the best games to come to a platform appear during a system’s twilight and this is definitely true of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. I may have skipped a few of 2010’s better releases, but for me, this was the most entertaining and engaging experience since Red Dead Redemption. Granted, the genres are not at all similar. In Ghost Trick, you play a spirit with “Powers of the Dead”, trying to unravel a series of seemingly unrelated cases, and ultimately, the cause of your own demise… but the experience was just as riveting and compelling as Red Dead Redemption.

I played it on the DS, but after having played a cavalcade of “play it a couple of times and then forget about it” types of games on the iPhone, it was a refreshing change to have something this well produced and crafted. The game immediately establishes the “rules” of your unusual situation, and the gameplay – much like one my indie favourites, Limbo – is constrained just enough to keep the puzzles solvable and my frustration to a minimum.

You are a spirit of someone recently deceased who has mysteriously gained several “abilities”. These abilities allow you to affect (what would normally be) inanimate objects in the world around you. You have a limited “range” so a good portion of the game is learning how to navigate around the environment. In some ways, it’s like the Sims (or “Little Computer People” if you can remember back that far), whereby you can influence events for the living folks going about their business, causing them to do different things or alter their routine.

I’ll tread carefully now, because I don’t want to ruin the excellent plot, but suffice it to say there are a lot of twists and turns as any good story possesses, and the game keeps you in suspense very nearly to the end as to what is really going on and your role in the whole affair. What I loved about the experience was that although some of the puzzles offered a significant challenge, the game mechanics give you ample opportunity to try different things, and gently nudge you in the direction that you should be going, but never in too heavy-handed of a way. It’s a testament to really excellent game design: never frustrating, and it encourages you in a subtle way to move in the direction that you should be progressing.

There are two modes that you can engage in: one is to manipulate objects in realtime, and the other is “Ghost Mode” whereby time freezes and you can move around in the environment. Critical timing is a factor in many of the puzzles, but you rarely have to be so precise for it to become frustrating. The time freezing of “Ghost Mode” means that you can stop, look and consider, so I rarely felt rushed. As you progress through the game, you discover that you have other “powers” to manipulate time, which become useful when you begin to investigate (and in some cases prevent) the deaths of others around you.

I first took notice of Ghost Trick because of its visual style. It is truly distinctive and I found it immediately charming. The designers went for a 2D animated style and the animations of the many quirky characters are delightful to say the least. I haven’t played many of the Ace Attorney series of games but I can see that Ghost Trick definitely shares the same charm from designer Shu Takumi’s popular series.

Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about Ghost Trick. It has great visual flair, a genuinely gripping and intriguing story and fun, engaging game mechanics. It simply had me enraptured for the duration and I
played nothing else until I had reached the finale.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is available for Nintendo DS and will soon be released for the iPhone.

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