We had early entry to the PS4 model of the demo.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a murder-mystery puzzle sport from Ace Lawyer author and director Shu Takumi. Initially launched on Nintendo DS 13 years in the past, it serves as one thing of a sister sport to Ace Lawyer, that includes a lot of the identical humor, model, and attraction. Any fan of Ace Lawyer’s story ought to really feel proper at residence right here, although what units this sport aside is its distinctive concentrate on manipulating in-game occasions within the model of a Rube Goldberg machine, setting off chain reactions of objects knocking one another over, hitting buttons to activate gadgets, and usually getting in the best way of any hapless villains or bystanders across the scene of a criminal offense.
If you happen to’ve already performed Phantom Detective on DS, the brand new remaster (which I performed a demo of on PS4) is fairly unremarkable. The unique’s contact display controls are easy sufficient to map cleanly to an analog stick, and the sport made so little use of the system’s twin screens that I needed to search for previous movies on YouTube in an effort to keep in mind simply what that second display was even doing within the unique sport. This can be a fairly easy port with few upgrades moreover HD visuals and the choice for a rearranged soundtrack. It’s bare-bones, however the sport’s easy cel-shaded model lends itself higher to larger resolutions than another latest video games that endure a poor AI-upscale.
If you happen to’ve by no means performed Phantom Detective, then this port is a superbly great way to take action, and I extremely advocate you accomplish that. The sport stars Sissel, a recently-deceased man who discovers he has unusual ghostly powers that enable him to own objects to maneuver them round and disrupt the setting. He can soar between close by objects, however his restricted vary signifies that you’ll want to search out intelligent methods to govern your environment in an effort to get the place you’re attempting to go.
Simply transferring round and usually haunting the place isn’t all Sissel can do although; he’s additionally in a position to possess the physique of anybody else who’s recently-deceased in an effort to rewind time to 4 minutes earlier than their demise and alter their destiny by performing a Ghost Trick. Every demise scene is a puzzle that have to be solved in an effort to manipulate the precise objects on the proper time in an effort to not directly save somebody’s life. The answer isn’t easy: you can also make a rolling cart slide throughout the room, however you’ll be able to’t defy physics and make it float the place you want it to be, so that you’ll must cleverly determine the best way to soar between a number of objects simply to get round.
Since these puzzles happen in a scripted time period, it’s not sufficient simply to know the place it is advisable to go; you’ll additionally want to concentrate to the actions of the characters within the scene to be the place it is advisable to be when it is advisable to be there. This setup provides plenty of rigidity in determining the precise timing earlier than it’s too late, although often this may result in you being pressured to only sit and look forward to the characters to succeed in the right a part of the script whenever you’ve already figured issues out.
Essentially the most notable characteristic of Phantom Detective—which holds up simply as effectively in HD—is the prime quality of its character animations. Each character is animated with a ton of attraction and character that went above and past in making use of the restricted {hardware} capabilities of the unique DS model. Plenty of huge, showy motion was essential to convey character on such a small display, and that gifted work appears to be like simply nearly as good on an enormous display at twice the body fee. It’s the identical high quality that we’ve come to count on from the 3D-animated Ace Lawyer video games, and in reality all character animators named within the unique sport’s credit went on to work on Ace Lawyer at one level or one other, making it clear how influential this sport was on its sister sequence.
The demo I performed is now publicly accessible on Change, PlayStation, and Steam. If you happen to haven’t performed Phantom Detective and also you’re even a bit interested by it, it is best to completely play this demo. It’s been over twelve years since I performed the unique sport on DS, and I’m nonetheless impressed by it to at the present time. I’m trying ahead to updating my imprecise decade-old reminiscences when the remaster lastly releases, since each reminiscence I do have of this sport tells me it’s probably the greatest and most original narrative video games I’ve ever performed.