A somewhat gay review of Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~Distant Memories~ (3DS)

Game: Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~Distant Memories~

Genre: Visual novel

Developer: Arc System Works

Publisher: Aksys Games

System: 3DS

Release date: 2016

I had such high hopes for Chase: Cold Case Investigations. The main reason for that: some (but not all) of the folks who made Hotel Dusk--as well as Trace Memory and Little King's Story--also made this digital 3DS game.

Unfortunately, Chase: Cold Case Investigations--or at least the minuscule portion of it that's presented in "Distant Memories" (more on what that means in a few paragraphs)--is no Hotel Dusk.

Hotel Dusk, despite its flaws, was a fully realized and surprisingly engaging, not to mention cinematic, product that showed just how marvelously dynamic a "visual novel" could be.

Unlike most of visual novels I've played--including Hakuoki and Sweet Fuse for PSP--to date, Hotel Dusk was more than a simple "Choose Your Own Adventure" story accompanied by static (and admittedly pretty) illustrations and enjoyable, if not altogether memorable, soundtracks. That 2007 title one-upped its fairly staid genremates by allowing players to freely move around within and otherwise explore three-dimensional spaces. It also let them solve puzzles and take notes using the DS' touch screen--all while holding the system on its side, "book-style."

And then there were satisfyingly superficial flourishes like the rotoscoped character portraits and the superbly low-key (and jazzy) backing tunes.

Sadly, you won't experience any of the above while working your way through Chase: Cold Case Investigations. What will you experience instead? A depressingly small cast (of six, if memory serves). Art that isn't completely terrible but is a far cry from what's showcased in the developer's previous titles. Scenes that feature such little animation they may as well be motionless. No exploration whatsoever. Disappointingly straightforward interactions with the game's characters. Oh, and the writing has little of the verve that drips from Hotel Dusk's text.

To be blunt, Chase: Cold Case Investigations feels half-baked. Worse, it feels like the half-baked introduction to what should be a much larger and longer game.

In its defense, it seems pretty obvious "Distant Memories" is just one part of what will wind up as a multi-part release. Still, this opening salvo is so underwhelming--and so relatively expensive, at $6 for less then two hours of content--that it's currently hard for me to imagine picking up any future installments unless it's clear from the word go they offer a lot more than this initial entry.

See also: previous 'somewhat gay' and 'Great Gaymathon' reviews

Is it wrong that Yasuhiro Wada's upcoming game, Birthdays, makes me wish I owned a PS4?

OK, so I'm sure I could think of at least a few other PS4 games that make me wish I owned Sony's latest console. At the moment, though, Birthdays is the only one that's coming to mind. (And, yes, this is despite the fact that Yasuhiro Wada's last game, Hometown Story, was quite a turd.)

What is Birthdays, you ask? Based on the handful of screenshots that've been released so far and the trailer found below, I'd describe it as being a thoroughly Japanese mix of Minecraft and an old SNES game called E.V.O.: Search for Eden.



According to one of the first English reports about this PS4 title, which will be published in its home country by Arc System Works, it "lets players create, steadily evolve and develop environments on new lands where living things are born."

The current plan is for it to hit the streets of Japan in early 2017. Apparently European and North American PS4 owners will get their hands on it shortly after that, as NIS America's already decided to localize Birthdays for those regions. (Here's hoping they keep the original name and logo.)

How about all of you wonderful folks? Are any of you also chomping at the bit to sink your teeth into Birthdays?

In which I blather on about a trio of Japanese 3DS game demos ...

Although I've owned a Japanese 3DS (read about it here) for about two months now, I've yet to buy a game for it. (Not even a digital one.) I have, however, downloaded a healthy number of demos from that region's eShop. As such, I thought it might be nice to write up a few mini-reviews of three of the demos I've played so far.



1. Neratte! Tobashite! Rilakkuma Guragura Sweets Tower--You didn't expect me to pass up this demo, did you--especially after I slobbered over its cover art in this previous blog post? Anyway, this one's a pretty straightforward demo: it can be played just three times and it offers up three levels of varying complexity. As I believe I shared in the aforementioned blog post, Neratte! Tobashite! Rilakkuma Guragura Sweets Tower is little more than an Angry Birds clone--which isn't a bad thing, in my opinion. It helps, of course, that it attempts to bring a few new things to the Angry Birds table, such as awarding bonus points for hitting characters from the Rilakkuma universe that are strewn about some of the levels. It also helps that the graphics (and the soundtrack, too, I guess) in this one are the gaming equivalent of a sugary waffle covered with ice cream, caramel and a cherry on top. Given all of the above, I'd actually pick up a copy of this disgustingly adorable game--if doing so wouldn't set me back as much as it currently would.



2. Shippuu no Usagi-Maru: Megumi no Tama to Fuuma no Shirushi--I've been trying to come up with an existing game that is most like this eShop-only puzzler-platformer since I first played this demo, but I can't quite do it. The closest one I can think of is Konami's Moai-kun for the Famicom, although even that isn't the best point of comparison. Regardless, both games task players with doing a bit of platforming while avoiding traps, pushing and pulling blocks, saving kidnapped maidens--that sort of thing. Anyway, Shippuu no Usagi-Maru's demo is pretty beefy as far as demos go, what with its seven included stages. Granted, five of them are little more than tutorials, but believe me when I say such introductions are needed if the second of the "real" levels is representative of the level of challenge that awaits folks who buy the full game. (It took me five tries to get through said stage.) That's a big plus in my book, as are the pixel-based graphics and Asian-influenced soundtrack found in this Arc System Works-published title. 



3. Taiko no Tatsujin: Chibi Dragon to Fushigina Orb--I've had my eye on this latest entry in Namco-Bandai's Taiko no Tatsujin series ever since I bought my "misty pink" Japanese 3DS, so it should come as little surprise to hear that it was one of the first Japanese eShop demos that I downloaded and tried. Unfortunately, Chibi Dragon to Fushigina Orb's demo is pretty thin in terms of content, featuring just two battles. Still, that was enough to convince me to add this title to my so-far-non-existant Japanese 3DS game collection sooner rather than later--thanks in large part to the gloriously over-the-top version of "O Sole Mio" that serves as the backdrop to the first battle. Here's hoping that by the time I finally do that (buy a copy of the game) I'll have a better understanding of what I'm supposed to do while playing it. (I don't know what I'm supposed to do with the bombs that appear every so often, for instance.)

The trio of demos discussed above are just a small sample of the ones I've nabbed from the Japanese eShop, so expect a similar post (or two) to this one to be published soon.

You say Shippuu no Usagi-Maru: Megumi no Tama to Fuuma no Shirushi, I say uh ...

While scanning Nintendo of Japan's website a week or so ago (I can't remember why, actually), I happened upon an enticing image of an upcoming 3DS eShop game.

After doing a bit of digging, I discovered that the game is called Shippuu no Usagi-Maru: Megumi no Tama to Fuuma no Shirushi and it's being published by Arc System Works, best known for two-dimensional brawlers BlazBlue and Guilty Gear.

Actually, I should say it was published by Arc System Works, as it was uploaded to the Japanese eShop (carrying a ¥500 price tag) on Oct. 10.



The main reason I'm interested in it is its art style, of course, but I'm also pretty interested in its gameplay (see a bit of it in the trailer above), which looks similar to that of Moai-kun, a puzzler-platformer that Konami released for the Famicom back in the day.

Fun fact: One of my co-hosts on The Nichiest Podcast Ever kindly agreed to translate the game's title for me, with the result being something along the lines of Usagimaru of the Gale: The Blessed Seed and the Cursed Seal. (Oh, and Usagimaru is the adorable protagonist's name.)