I don’t play portable games. I don’t own intend to, and I don’t really want to. That was until I played this game. I had to borrow a friends 3DS to do this review and it has completely changed my perspective on handheld gaming devices. I never felt like I needed one before, after all I have my PC and PS3 sitting cosily at home if I want to game properly without dumbed down graphics or the worry of battery life. Even if I did decide to do some gaming outside my house I could just buy something on the app store and play that. James Noir’s Hollywood Crimes 3D is much better than I could have dreamed coming from a handheld title and surpasses in quality nearly everything I have purchased on the app store.
Apparently this game is “a bit likeLayton”. I don’t really know if that’s true, I’ve never played a Professor Layton adventure in my life so I have literally no idea what it entails. What I can tell you about this game is it is a murder mystery puzzle solving adventure about a TV show. Stay with me here. The main character is *insert your name here* and you are one of the brightest puzzle solvers in the world. But only if you do the puzzles right. You apply for a gameshow in which you will go head to head with another person who is the unrivalled champion of mentioned show. Alongside being on TV, you are also solving a murder! As weak as this plot sounds it somehow manages to string itself along and should not be taken too seriously, because you can really have fun with it. The high points of the campaign are surprisingly memorable and it is never tedious or dull, even if the campaign is only a handful of hours long, but this is not a game you would buy for the end result, more the journey.
The opening cutscene was very impressive. I was thinking “this is like playing a regular game, almost the HD standard, but in another dimension!” The first cutscene ended and I’m afraid it was all downhill into characters that look like something out of Duke Nukem 3D and a very peculiar cast of voice actors, who may just be random people Ubisoft pulled out of the street. Though this doesn’t fit modern games it gives it a sort of home grown, natural, 1950′s charm that very few modern games can match. Somehow it manages to pull that off and make it a good, exciting play.
The puzzles, what a puzzle game centres upon can be quite challenging at times. These are mostly physical puzzles, which I’m told differ from Professor Layton’s mostly mental puzzles. These physical puzzles often include moving a shape to find a specific pattern, moving snakes to get a specific one to the end like it’s one free square puzzle etc, etc. They are challenging all the way through the game and put you under pressure time after time. They feel rewarding and that, for me, marks a successful puzzle game. The touchscreen controls are used well and often, which I have no qualms with because the touchscreen controls work very well.
This is an oddball in a world of similarity and bringing a new 3rd party title to the 3DS was a very bold move by Ubisoft and after playing through the first game a sequel would not be out of the question. I would love to see the same development team have another crack of the whip on this one, with perhaps a move to another handheld (The PlayStation Vita would be an empty market for puzzle games, so you don’t have to compete against Nintendo’s own Professor Layton and you get better graphics to work with) and a size up in development time because something tells me that this was not laboured over for years. With some improvements this could be the go-to puzzle series. Take note Ubisoft.
7/10
