It seems like every time a point-and-click adventure game is released, the reviewer makes it a point to belabor the relative rarity of these types of games in today's marketplace. This has persisted despite the fact that the genre has experienced a pretty big upswing in releases, due in part to the DS and its touchscreen interface. So, given the popularity of 2006's Touch Detective, it makes sense that a sequel was released in short order. But does it really warrant the 50% overenumeration that it advertises?
Touch Detective 2 1/2 once again puts players in the frilly dress of Mackenzie, newly inducted into the Great Detective Society after failing to submit her Investigation Report notes from the last game for approval - instead, her Touch List was sent, garnering her the official title of "Touch Detective". The game opens with a slight rehash of the previous game's tutorial, and soon the familiar faces start arriving. Penelope returns as the hapless victim or trauma magnet, Chloe returns as the snarky foil, and Funghi remains the vaguely phallic-shaped ambulatory mushroom sidekick. New characters enter the fray, including the clueless Inspector Daria, the shameless Mayor Tom, and the ruthless Cornstalker, as Mackenzie sleuths her way through five new cases and over a dozen side tales.
The gameplay in TD2 is identical to its predecessor's; using the stylus, the player selects items for Mackenzie to interact with, occasionally prompting some dialogue. Mackenzie can also pick up items and take closer looks at them, with combination of certain items being an option at some points. For example, the player could pick up an unusual scrap of blank paper, only to later find that it's the backing to a sticker. Interactivity with the items is rather limited; once touched, items are used or Mackenzie will remark on them. Moreover, the world in which Mackenzie investigates is unusually static for games of this type, as interaction points are clearly defined or marked.
A large portion of the game's charm comes from the art style, and fans of the previous game will be delighted to know that it remains unchanged. Quite literally. Many bits of art are reused or substantially similar to the original game's, which - while retaining the Jhonen Vasquez/Squee-esque innate cuteness of the characters - starts to get a little stale. The new characters introduced largely match the original style, with a few glaring and notable exceptions. It's beautiful, to be sure, but what's been recycled - about half of the locations - wasn't improved even in the slightest.
However, that's more than made up for in the game's dialogue. Through the five primary chapters, the gags never stop flowing - be they from the cracked-out people Mackenzie deals with on a daily basis, to Mackenzie's own internal monologue on the proceedings (which is shown on the upper screen, and is in fact the only use for the upper screen within the game - another missed opportunity, really, as it could have been put to good use as a notes section). The cases don't get as deeply into the complete nonsense of the original game's (read: Penelope's not being dressed up as a "snow angel" this time), and every once in a while the case will end without an actual resolution. But, all five episodes are linked by the pursuit of the Cornstalker, a slightly darker-themed nemesis to Mackenzie. Overall, the writing is strong enough to carry the game through a couple of the lulls that it finds itself in.
These lulls are the sole fault of the second most major flaw in all adventure games - arbitrarily-assigned progress flags. In Chapter 4, at several points it will be obvious what needs to be done, but the game will not let the player progress until he or she traipses back through several different screens and endures lengthy, dry conversations with the knowledgeable NPCs. It's also not always clear which NPC the player needs to speak to - for example, after obtaining an item that's centered around a haunted house, the player must speak to the fortune teller in the commercial district who will tell Mackenzie how to use the item, when the item is fairly obvious in its use. Granted, Mackenzie might not know how to use it, but if the player's controlling Mackenzie and does know how, don't force the player to read what he or she already knows - this isn't Dungeons and Dragons, where there has to be that separation between in- and out-of-character knowledge.
It almost goes without saying that the worst flaw in all adventure games - an almost total-lack of replayability - is front-and-center in TD2. Once the five primary episodes are completed, the player can go through about three or four more hours' worth of bonus mini-cases, but that's about it. Overall, a clever player can get through the whole thing in about ten hours.
Overall, Touch Detective 2 1/2 (which was numbered similarly to the Naked Gun movies intentionally, by the way, and not merely as a marketing gag by Atlus) is really closer to Touch Detective 1.5. It feels more along the lines of an expansion pack to the original game as opposed to a new game, and the heavy use of recycled environments does nothing to mitigate the fact that it's basically the same game. Not that Touch Detective was a bad game, mind you, and not that TD2 falls prey to some of the more grievous problems that the original did (no pixel-hunting here). But it could have been so much more. I'd said last time that Touch Detective could be best-served by an episodic approach, and quite frankly this game does nothing to dissuade me of that opinion; maybe, given the success of the games so far, a Wii compilation port with some new cases is in order. As touching as keeping in contact with Mackenzie is, this constant tapping on my wallet is really starting to push my buttons.
