Just a few years ago, Trauma Center created the first true medical drama experience in a handheld video game. Similarly, Capcom paved the way for legal dramas with its hit series Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. But in the midst of new gameplay types and genre innovations, players were left wondering why crime dramas hadn’t been given the same DS treatment. Sure, you could pretend to be a bug detective in the clunky shooter Insecticide, but that was nowhere near the quality of the others. Say what you want about movies and TV, but gaming crime dramas have yet to deserve our attention.

That looked to change with Unsolved Crimes, a Hill Street Blues-inspired mystery game from Empire Interactive. As the off-screen detective, players work with a woman who is both strong and confident. She likes to dig underneath the surface, examining every part of the crime scene. No piece of evidence is too small or too insignificant. At the end of the day, it could be the most trivial item (seemingly trivial) that solves the case.

With the touch screen and stylus acting as your personal crime scene investigator, you’ll inspect each scenario in full 3D. The stylus serves two key purposes – first, it allows you to move through the environment and examine each area from almost any angle. Walk by pressing the D-pad or by touching any of the four arrows (up, down, left or right) on screen. Raise and lower your view by using the camera slider, and touch any other part of the screen to change your standard viewing perspective.

Second, you can use the stylus – or your finger, if you wish – to investigate any part of a crime scene. “Any part” includes the ceiling fan, kitchen sink, refrigerator, television, doors, windows, and anything else that may or may not have something to do with the mystery at hand. In fact, 90% of what you examine won’t have any point at all. But every detective goes through that. If the developers had only chosen to include the elements that are necessary to solve each case, this game wouldn’t feel like much of a mystery.

That was a smart development decision, but it’s also where things begin to fall apart. As a developer of a crime drama – one of the first of its kind for a handheld platform – you have to make room for the possibility that anyone with a television may try your game. Law & Order fans are bound to be curious, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem with that potential is that without knowing who exactly will play your game, it’s impossible to measure the difficulty of each crime. Joe Gamer may be a serious and dedicated player, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to look for clues and put things together. Joe TV Viewer may not game much but enjoys the thought-provoking entertainment of Life. He may follow the show closely and enjoy solving each crime before the truth is revealed, making him the perfect candidate for this kind of a video game. Or he may just like the show but doesn’t understand how the crimes are actually solved.

 
Broken glass – could this be a clue?

That lack of knowledge is apparent throughout all of Unsolved Crimes. The developers worked with what they had but ultimately didn’t know if we’d be able to step into the shoes of a detective. Thus, this game dummies the process with a Q&A system that relies on memory and a number of “duh, we just did that, and now you’re asking me to repeat it” moments.

Those moments are initiated by the collection of clues, which prompts a list of queries to appear. Let’s say you’ve got to examine three witness testimonies in a murder case. None of the witnesses saw the murder but may have seen the murderer and/or the victim. By comparing each testimony, you’ll be able to decipher any inconsistencies between them. This prompts a query where you’ll have to examine each inconsistency to prove which are innocent mistakes and which (if any) were intentional to throw off the police. Queries generally consist of a list of “duh” questions relating to the portion of the crime you’ve just solved.

Ex: which testimony is inconsistent? Tap the witness whose words are believed to be false. If correct, another query is likely to appear, along with reports interspersed where you’ll head back to the station and debrief your boss by reiterating key details. But it isn’t just a simple text display of the facts – you’ll have to participate by entering key words or letters that relate to the crime.

Occasionally this is clever: the police are temporarily thrown when one witness mistakes the letter “B” in the word “Bomb” (graffiti written on a park bench) for the number “13.” When you finally run through the park and see what the witness saw, it not only makes sense but creates the sensation that you’re a part of a crime drama. If the game could have produced moments like this with every case and every query, the text-based setup may have felt less like a silly word game and more like real crime solving.

In most cases it is possible to pass just by following the basic clues. Players won’t lose more than points for guessing poorly since they can re-try any query that they fail. With only four choices per query question, it doesn’t take much to figure out which choices are correct.

Despite the 3D view, Unsolved Crimes really skimps on the presentation. The intro animation is nicely spread across both of the DS’ screens. But every scene after that is either a single frame of artwork or some very poorly animated figures that are purposely grayed out to prevent you from seeing the victim or the killer. During these scenes, the music is quite good; during the actual game, however, it is bland and highly repetitive.

But that isn’t as troubling as the moments when the touch screen mechanics aren’t good enough to sustain the game’s demands. Opening a safe, for example, isn’t that big of a deal when the combination is provided. But what if your hands were so slippery that you couldn’t grip the dial? That best describes the experience you’ll have trying to open a safe in Unsolved Crimes. The dial is too slippery and jittery to use the stylus, and still too sensitive (yet not accurate enough) to use your finger. It was horribly frustrating. I spent at least five minutes trying turn it properly, which is more than I spent on any one particular query (or most other objectives in the game).

 
That safe (right side, bottom screen) gives me nightmares.

Similarly flawed is the map system. You can draw notes on the map because … Why exactly? DS games like MYST include this function to prevent us from needing a notepad. But in the sixth or seventh mission when players will need this feature most – the first objective is to update an old map – your drawings do not appear on the map during the mission! They appear on the normal map screen, which cannot be accessed during this particular part of the case. The map you can access is completely blank. (If it weren’t for the pain I’d be laughing at the irony.) So when the game asks you to reiterate details like which park entrance is red and where the new slide is located, good luck. It’s a guessing game of tedious proportions.

Gameplay: 4.0
Decent mysteries and clever revelations are not enough to make silly word games entertaining.

Graphics: 3.0
The environments are detailed enough to examine, but are nowhere near detailed enough to impress.

Sound: 6.0
The small selection of intriguing sequence music is overshadowed by the lackluster gameplay tunes that play repeatedly while trying to solve each case.

Difficulty: Easy
You can retry the cases that you fail, get hints for the queries that make no sense, or win just by guessing.

Concept: 7.0
Solid idea, poor execution.

Overall: 4.0
Unsolved Crimes is a cool idea, but it’s going to take a lot more experimentation (and the careful listening to player feedback) for the developers to get it right. The series has promise, as evidenced by the “13” scenario. But in its current form, this is a case that, once solved, isn’t likely to be reopened.