Again (Nintendo DS) Review

Jonathan Weaver has a special skill, one that he acquired as a young boy when faced with a truly traumatic experience that left him orphaned. Special Agent Weaver of the FBI has the ability to compare events in the present with those of the past. Thanks to the layout of the Nintendo DS system, and how the portable can be held on its side like a book whilst playing, the main mechanic is one that would have to be completely re-thought if done on another platform. Instead, the DS works wonderfully in this respect, with the present day viewpoint on the touch-screen and the historical scenes shown on the other screen (there is also an inverted approach for left-handed players).

Being called upon by his boss, Henry Mills, to investigate a suspicious murder in Hotel Miranda, Room 315 (not quite Hotel Dusk: Room 215, but close!), Agent Weaver is tasked with working alongside a rookie called Kate Hathaway, a young blonde with a heart-warming smile. It is there that something shocking strikes him - a string of murders from 19 years previously appear to be about to start once more. The murderer, who left the ‘Eye of Providence’ from a US dollar bill at the scene of each crime, thus garnering him/her the nickname of ‘Providence’, was never caught. Could it really be the case of this homicidal maniac returning to finish the original job, or is this a case of a copycat killer?

The game is split into two main types of play, the first being a simple chat/interrogation mode, which is basically travelling from place-to-place via the in-game map, working your way through various conversation threads, talking to numerous witnesses and reviewing case notes in order to make progress on capturing the murderer. The other is based around 3D movement, where Agent Weaver must carefully inspect crime scenes and use his ability to identify discrepancies between the previous and current images laid out before him across the two DS screens. Once a set amount of differences have been highlighted, steps must be taken to obtain certain items in order to recreate the setting exactly as it was in the past, thus allowing Weaver to turn his mind into a receiver, picking up a blurred video snippet of a section of the dastardly deed. When everything has been set back in place, and all the clips have been viewed, the player must put each mini-scene in the correct order, chronologically, at which point the whole crime is revealed and the killer’s face unmasked.

Logic must be applied to the differences in an area, and the same goes when it comes to placing items back in the position you believe they should be. This is not the sort of game where guessing your way through will achieve the best possible outcome. If you simply click on anything and everything, or try every possible permutation of item and objects, it will result in Agent Weaver’s mind being sent into too much shock and a resultant ‘Game Over.’ However, there are times when ‘educated guess work’ is seemingly the only option, unfortunately. Frustratingly, as with many games in the adventure genre, there are plenty of times when it is absolutely, blindingly obvious what is meant to happen next, or instantly clear what object needs to be collected, yet unless a certain event has been triggered, there is no chance of skipping a couple of steps. This can lead to situations where you must travel around, going through every conversation thread again, and scouring the crime scene even more thoroughly than before to try and find the right trigger.

It is apparent in some instances that this is purposefully done in order to avoid breaking the flow of the story, which can be forgiven. However, there are a few points where frustration definitely starts to creep in, with one particular example being an object right in front of your nose that you pass about three or four times before finally being permitted to collect and use it. Moments like this do not cripple the entire game, but they do threaten to tarnish what is otherwise a highly enjoyable interactive crime story with twists a-plenty. The combination of CiNG and Tecmo may not quite have produced something as magical as Hotel Dusk: Room 215, but AGAIN is definitely one of the better adventure-style efforts on the Nintendo DS so far. Currently there is no firm European release date, but Tecmo has said on numerous occasions that AGAIN will eventually arrive in PAL territories, so hopefully it will land before Nintendo rolls out The Last Window, the sequel to Hotel Dusk.