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IGN Review of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
In Ghost Trick, you're better off dead. Stepping into the spirit of a recently-deceased fellow with no memory of who he was or why he was murdered, you have one night to unravel these mysteries. Luckily, your new status among the non-living has granted you some useful supernatural abilities that will help in your quest for justice. This clever adventure game from the makers of Phoenix Wright provides one of the last great hurrahs for the Nintendo DS.
The best reason to play Ghost Trick is for the amazing animation. The 2D sprites move more fluidly than even some cartoons and it's a joy to simply watch characters dance around onscreen. It's probably the most impressive animation I've ever seen in a video game.
Ghost Trick was very obviously developed in Japan -- characters are flamboyant, reactions are over exaggerated, and there is some awkward dialogue. It's not a translation issue; there are just some things that are meaningful to the Japanese that don't carry as much weight in our culture. These details won't bother fans of Japanese games, but not everyone appreciates them.
It's also very wordy. The zany story is entertaining and you do meet lots of interesting people, but sometimes you just want a game to shut up and let you play. That said, experiencing the unraveling mystery and its colorful cast are enormous parts of the package. You quickly realize that there is more to this story than just your own murder, and with the help of a spunky redhead detective who has a bad habit of dying on the job, you'll uncover a national conspiracy.
Ghost Trick is an ingenious take on point-and-click adventure games. Since you are a bodiless spirit, you must inhabit (or haunt) objects and manipulate them in order to achieve your goals. Remember Pee-Wee Herman's Breakfast Machine? Many levels require you to build your own contraption that eventually results in a series of reactions leading to success. For example, you may have to extend an umbrella to knock a girl's headphones into an aquarium so that she can't use them and so that she can hear (and hide) when a hitman comes knocking.
It involves a lot of trial and error and solutions aren't always logical, but the experimentation is usually great fun. This is a pretty challenging game and you'll likely have to retry the 19 chapters multiple times before you figure out exactly what Ghost Trick wants you to do, but the inventive gameplay kept me from feeling frustrated. One slight disappointment is that it's all very linear and there is only one way to solve each problem – you don't get to find your own answer.
There are a few other fun tricks you have up your sleeve. Telephone lines act as teleportation highways that allow you to instantly jump to new locations. You can also rewind time to four minutes ago, giving you a limited amount of time to avoid tragedy and save lives. No worries if you fail, though -- you can just rewind again. The story is a bit darker than you might expect and a lot of people die in this game. Of course, you also bring a lot of people back to life.
Each chapter is self-contained and can't be passed until you've saved a life or found a certain piece of evidence. Ghost Trick does a great job of presenting a variety of challenges so it avoids feeling repetitive. One moment you're helping a prisoner escape his jail cell in a stealth sequence and the next you're sabotaging a stakeout in order to prevent a giant chicken from falling on a girl's head. Really.
©2011-01-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The best reason to play Ghost Trick is for the amazing animation. The 2D sprites move more fluidly than even some cartoons and it's a joy to simply watch characters dance around onscreen. It's probably the most impressive animation I've ever seen in a video game.
Ghost Trick was very obviously developed in Japan -- characters are flamboyant, reactions are over exaggerated, and there is some awkward dialogue. It's not a translation issue; there are just some things that are meaningful to the Japanese that don't carry as much weight in our culture. These details won't bother fans of Japanese games, but not everyone appreciates them.
It's also very wordy. The zany story is entertaining and you do meet lots of interesting people, but sometimes you just want a game to shut up and let you play. That said, experiencing the unraveling mystery and its colorful cast are enormous parts of the package. You quickly realize that there is more to this story than just your own murder, and with the help of a spunky redhead detective who has a bad habit of dying on the job, you'll uncover a national conspiracy.
Ghost Trick is an ingenious take on point-and-click adventure games. Since you are a bodiless spirit, you must inhabit (or haunt) objects and manipulate them in order to achieve your goals. Remember Pee-Wee Herman's Breakfast Machine? Many levels require you to build your own contraption that eventually results in a series of reactions leading to success. For example, you may have to extend an umbrella to knock a girl's headphones into an aquarium so that she can't use them and so that she can hear (and hide) when a hitman comes knocking.
It involves a lot of trial and error and solutions aren't always logical, but the experimentation is usually great fun. This is a pretty challenging game and you'll likely have to retry the 19 chapters multiple times before you figure out exactly what Ghost Trick wants you to do, but the inventive gameplay kept me from feeling frustrated. One slight disappointment is that it's all very linear and there is only one way to solve each problem – you don't get to find your own answer.
There are a few other fun tricks you have up your sleeve. Telephone lines act as teleportation highways that allow you to instantly jump to new locations. You can also rewind time to four minutes ago, giving you a limited amount of time to avoid tragedy and save lives. No worries if you fail, though -- you can just rewind again. The story is a bit darker than you might expect and a lot of people die in this game. Of course, you also bring a lot of people back to life.
Each chapter is self-contained and can't be passed until you've saved a life or found a certain piece of evidence. Ghost Trick does a great job of presenting a variety of challenges so it avoids feeling repetitive. One moment you're helping a prisoner escape his jail cell in a stealth sequence and the next you're sabotaging a stakeout in order to prevent a giant chicken from falling on a girl's head. Really.
©2011-01-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved