Pikachu takes on new role
Detective Pikachu For: Nintendo 3DS From: Nintendo Rating: (G) ★★★+
NINTENDO’S Pokemon is a massively popular but reliable series in terms of what to expect from each release. Aside from its
various spinoffs — Pokemon Go, Pokemon Puzzle Challenge, and other familiar titles — it doesn’t change very much.
But Detective
Pikachu completely shakes things up from the normal formula, and it works. If you’re not totally sold on the idea of a talking Pikachu who happens to also solve mysteries, you will be after taking Detective Pikachu for a spin.
Detective Pikachu is the most unique Pokemon game currently out on the market, as you’ll see just moments after starting it up. We’re introduced to the wisecracking detective immediately, a wholly different character than the Pikachu we’re used to. This sassy, gruff little mouse is far from the obedient companion we’ve known for years. He’s a grizzled oldtimer who seems more like a wizened police chief in movies. While it’s a new dynamic for the series, it’s also one that works well, like a strange old buddy cop show.
Tim Goodman, Pikachu’s human companion, makes for an entertaining foil to Pikachu’s chuckleworthy oneliners, and the two make for a charming pair.
Tim and Pikachu are working together to find out, first and foremost, what happened to Tim’s father. There’s a wide variety of criminal mysteries to decode as the story unfolds, most of which require you to do your own bit of detective work.
For each case, you chat with potential witnesses, gather information and jot everything down in your case book. Your notes are always at your disposal, with all the information you glean on your journey at a glance on the bottom screen if you need it. You can talk to humans and Pokemon, thanks to Pikachu, and it yields interesting results.
When you have enough information gathered by investigating crime scenes and chatting to witnesses, Pikachu will let you know when it’s time to start putting things together so you can figure out what’s going on. With nine chapters that can take about an hour or so or more to solve, there’s plenty of playtime here. You do, however, run into some repetition.
You’ll typically be asked to do the same kind of investigations over and over, with different culprits and different outcomes. I couldn’t help but feel like this was a gentle ‘‘first’’ attempt at guiding players to a different sort of world featuring some of their favourite characters, and thus that’s why it felt a little simpler than it should have.
Still, Detective Pikachu has been a solid hit through and through. From Pikachu’s weirdly appropriate voice to the fun cases involving both Pokemon and humans to the interesting detective cases to solve, I had a blast getting to the end of the game. It may seem like a trainwreck when you look at it all rationally, but it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in some time. — TCA