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DS adventure game Touch Detective touches down on iOS today
If you're a DS fan from way back, you might remember Touch Detective, a quirky adventure game released by Atlus in 2006. If you missed it back then, you can check it out now on iOS. Developer Beeworks has released the spooky point-and-click today as an episodic iPhone game -- you can get the app for free (iTunes link), and then buy episodes in $3.99 bundles or $8.99 for all of them. If you do buy all the episodes, you get the new bonus episode "Funghi Breaks Out!" starring the phallic sidekick character from the main game. No, even more phallic than you're thinking. Imagine a character who is a mushroom, but drawn to be as phallic as you could possibly make something by accident, and then a little more phallic than that.%Gallery-129957%
Atlus lovers, head to Amazon
We've already established that having the Atlus name on the front of a box is usually A Very Good Thing, and look! Somebody at Amazon must clearly have been listening to us, as the uber-retailer has the following Atlus-published titles up for sale: Rondo of Swords -- $19.99 Draglade -- $13.39 Ontamarama -- $10.04 Contact -- $23.44 Touch Detective 2 1/2 -- $9.99 That's not all -- while we were scrounging though Amazon's bargain basement section, we found a couple of other potentially worthy additions to your DS library: Children of Mana -- $20.09 Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble -- $10.04 You can also get Ping Pals for $4.29. But like that deserves a functioning link. %Gallery-14108%
Touch Detective 2 1/2 sale: Now 3/4 the price!
If you're picking up Professor Layton and the Curious Village (and/or a Cobalt & Black DS Lite), you're likely in an adventure-game mood anyway, so why not also grab a cheap copy of Touch Detective 2 1/2 at GameStop while it's cheap? Don't see the point in buying two mystery-solving titles at the same time? Well, uh, you could get Alvin and the Chipmunks instead. We hear it's ... a game.Add if you'd rather not have some pizza-faced clerk make fun of you for buying a game with a huge phallic character on the cover, both GameStop and EB Games have the gothic title available on their online shops for the $14.99 sale price. Take that, store clerk jerks![Via CAG]
DS Fanboy Review: Touch Detective 2 1/2
Sometimes you go into a game thinking the formula is so brilliant that it can't do wrong. When things don't go as smoothly as you expected, you begin to make excuses for not enjoying yourself. Finally, you realize what you were afraid of all along: that the game is just not that good. If you've ever had this happen to you, you'll know exactly how it feels to play Touch Detective 2 1/2.
Touch Detective 2 1/2 site goes live
Oh, Mackenzie. We can't help but love you, with your quirky little face and even quirkier cast of extras. And thanks to the brand new site for Touch Detective 21⁄2, we can wallow in new screenshots, character profiles, and more. The best part? The site is filled to the brim with the two things that are best about this burgeoning franchise: the art design and the humor. Also, if anything was ever great avatar material, it is Space Salmon. Someone slap a Mario hat on that guy and use him on Joystiq.
Atlus confirms Ontama, Touch Detective sequel, Draglade for US
If there's one thing to love about E3 -- even the all-new, scaled down E3 -- it's the flood of new game announcements that tend to come with the show. On that front, Atlus has certainly not disappointed us; this morning, they let fly with a bevy of localization announcements. One -- Touch Detective 2½ -- we expected, but the announcements that Draglade and Ontamarama are headed to English-speaking gamers are news indeed. For rhythm game enthusiasts, those last two are very good news indeed. Ontamarama follows the story of Beat and Rest, two "Ontamaestros" who discover an evil demon (as opposed to all the good ones) is cajoling villagers into trapping Ontama, the sound spirits who bring music to the land. Of course, that means our heroes have to get their rhythm on in order to save the day. Also, the word "Ontamaestros" demonstrates why we love Atlus-style localizations. We've been cooing excitedly over this game for months, so unless you've been living under a rock that didn't have wifi, you've probably seen a screenshot or two. Draglade is the intriguing mix of rhythm and fighting that the world has been waiting for. Well, we've been waiting, at least. In the world of Draglade, the premier spectator sport of the day is "Grapping," which sorta makes us think of breakdance fighting -- just with more potential violence. The game tracks the rise of four hungry Grappers, Hibito, Guy, Kyle, and Daichi, and their struggle to make it to the top. Can someone get us a hip hop version of "Eye of the Tiger" up in here? Obviously, Touch Detective 2½ is the sequel to the BeeWorks game released last year. We have such a love-hate relationship with this game that we can't help but look forward to the sequel, if only because we're masochists.[Via press release]
Touch Detective sequel continues to taunt us with fungus
Before Touch Detective hit shelves, we were obsessed with it -- the dark, unique look, the intriguing characters ... we couldn't get enough! The game itself, however, didn't really deliver; there was too much going on to enjoy Mackenzie's wackiness on the top screen, and the puzzles were less-than-optimal.And yet ... faced with a sequel ... we're back on the love train. We can't help it. It must be the rapidly multiplying shape of Mackenzie's sidekick, Funghi, shown in the opening movie. He's hypnotic and we're powerless before him. We love the music, we love the wacky parade of characters, and when the localized sequel lands near us, we'll probably pick it up again and hope for the best.Sometimes, even knowing better just doesn't matter in the face of pretty, pretty art.
Metareview: Touch Detective
Color us disappointed. Touch Detective looks so fascinating, from the unusual art style to the story to the eyebrow-raisingly strange sidekick Funghi. We were looking forward to it, and still are ... just with less fervor. It's interesting to note that while the game is often compared in reviews to Trace Memory (and, of course, our beloved Phoenix Wright), due to the gameplay and style, the way reviewers refer to Trace Memory is quite varied (it's terrible! it's great! it's so-so!), so it's probably not surprising that some love Touch Detective and others think the developers should probably be beaten. Most of the reviews have one thing in common, however -- the gameplay aspect of Touch Detective, well, it isn't so good. GameSpy - 40%: Touch Detective may have the weirdest, driest sense of humor I've ever encountered in a game. It's rarely if ever laugh-out-loud funny, but it did make me smile a bunch, particularly when reading Mackenzie's secret thoughts on the top screen. The localized script is very capably written. Despite all this, the storylines are just not very intriguing. Worse, the game isn't very engaging to play. The puzzles are a weird combination of simple yet obtuse; there's generally not a lot of items you can get at any one time, yet the way you use them is often weird enough that the solution's not very obvious. Sometimes I'd seem to run out of options, which led to much frustrated back-tracking through the game's decidedly small number of environments. The problem often turned out to be that I simply hadn't clicked in the right place on a certain screen; for example, in a store, it transpired that only one of the items was purchasable, and it took me several trips there (and a lucky tap) to figure out I could get the item I knew I wanted. That's the epitome of very annoying game design.
