Ghost Trick (Out now!)

[Jessweeee♪]

In English, even!
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective Playable Flash Demo - DS Previews at GameSpot (http://www.gamespot.com/ds/adventure/ghosttrick/news.html?sid=6284628&part=rss&tag=gs_ds&subj=6284628&mode=previews)

Anybody else excited about this game? It looks pretty neat!

(If you didn't bother with the above link, basically you're a ghosty dead guy and you have to possess stuff to save people so you can find out why you died!)

[Roto13]

I'm looking forward to it. I've discovered that I really hate demos that are just tutorials, though, so I'll skip that. :P

[Agent Proto]

I've been excited about this game when it was announced. The animation looks brilliant and I'm getting the same vibe from this game as with the Ace Attorney games! :D

[Jessweeee♪]

It should! Shu Takumi handled it after all!

Also, it'll be out January 11th!

[Jessweeee♪]

Started playing it today!


A cameo appearance?!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/jesse053/asdfghjlkjhgfd.jpg


Nope. They totally did that on purpose, too.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v726/jesse053/asdfghjlkjhgfd2.jpg

[JKTrix]

Missile is the real cameo.

Game's got a lot going for it, but the best thing about it by far are the animations.

[Jessweeee♪]

Missile is probably my favorite character so far. Or maybe the two cops in the guard house. I don't know!

EDIT:

Beat the game. Missile is definitely my favorite. The ending was very heartwarming.


The clues to Sissle's identity are all there. "I don't know what a science even is." "Oh no, I can't read!" "Huh I brought a cat with me to the junkyard." The revelation of Ray's identity was also pretty cool. What dedication Missile has!


Also, I only had to look up a guide twice, and even then I could have figured it out with a little more patience. A nice break from submitting every piece of evidence and every profile to every single text bubble when stumped in Ace Attorney.

[JKTrix]

I think I might have enjoyed this game more if I hadn't played 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=869azSXO1BI) so recently. It is a little unfair to compare the two since 999's writer is just on a different level than Takumi, but that experience is still fresh and powerful in my mind after almost 2 months.

The animation remains the very best thing about Ghost Trick. It adds magnitudes of personality to the game's characters, and gives it a huge advantage over the plain Talking Heads that Ace Attorney and 999 (and other games) have.

The plot was probably better than I want to give it credit for, but it is still in the shadow of 999. The logic of some of the characters was kind of unbelievable and contrived just to make the 'layers' of the plot work (namely Jowd). It was still executed very well and things came together in a believable way.

Now the puzzles. To be blunt, they just seemed lazy. The whole 'time rewind' thing seemed like an excuse to have a convoluted sequence of events lead to whatever conclusion they wanted you to have. While a linear solution to a puzzle isn't unusual (after all, many puzzles can only be solved one way), what makes it worse is that this trial-and-error system forces you to rewind time and then wait for things to happen again. I just felt like it was wasting my time, something that I do not want to feel when I play games (as contradictory as that may seem). Still, it provided some nice moments once you finally did everything the game wanted you to, but it never quite matched the feeling I get when I know exactly what piece of evidence to present in an Ace Attorney game. AA had some 'guessy' times as well, but I didn't need to rewind and do it all over just to guess again.

It probably sounds like I'm hating, but these are just things that make the game fall short of 'fantastic'.

The thing that pissed me off the most, though, was that you could not 'save anywhere'. In the AA games, there are very few instances where you couldn't just press Start and save. In Ghost Trick, you can only manually save when you have control of your ghost. Not so hot for me, playing this game in the breaks between school and I'm stuck in some dialogue that I can't save and take a break from.

And really, if that's the biggest issue I felt (meaning the other things I complained about were lesser hindrances to the experience), then it's really not that bad. The DS has a sleep mode almost negates the need to save anywhere, it was just something I'm used to doing in these kinds of games.

Overall, the game is worth playing and I would recommend it enthusiastically. These adventure games are some of the best reasons to own a DS, though right now I think 999 stands at the top of the pile.