Play it: change
Current goals: Discover the chilling truth about a crime
I’ve never played the first two. Famicom Detective Club game, but marketing around Emio – smiling man Enticed enough to finally give this series a try, the first truly new entry in decades. Nintendo smartly released a pretty meaty demo that allowed me to try out the first few chapters, and after playing through it, I’m still not sure if the game’s classic adventure-oriented visual novel gameplay will appeal to me. I did purchase the full game, though, so obviously I’m interested and want to continue exploring.
I’ve heard other people complain that games like this feel haphazard, requiring no real thought, insight, or ingenuity to progress, but instead just encouraging you to cycle through menu options until you hit some trigger that moves things forward. I admit, I did experience some of this during the presentation. For example, at one point I had to look at a woman’s face to trigger the next interaction, but I didn’t feel like I really had any way of knowing that. But I’m not ready to criticize a game in a moment like this. It’s a different type of gameplay than the adventure games I was used to growing up, and I wanted to keep an open mind about what it could do.
Maybe I’ll find something unique to appreciate about this approach that allows me to slow down and get deeper into the story it’s telling. Regardless, it’s good to have a game that excites me, not because of the rewards it dangles in front of me or because it offers me the chance to become stronger as I go on epic, action-packed quests , but because I thought Curling would probably be very comfortable and enjoyable reading it in bed every night, like I would a good book. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a murder to solve.——Caroline Pettit