Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk is a detective adventure game. At least, that’s how it advertises itself, but I think it would be more fair to call this game a puzzle game/visual novel (for those of you who don’t know what a visual novel is, a visual novel is a game wherein at least 90% of the gameplay occurs as pictures accompanied by one or more lines of text).
Most of the time spent with this game occurs as watching the game’s story. Not to say this is a bad thing. While the story suffers from many traditional detective story tropes, it is still compelling in its own right. Every now and again, the gameplay will be interrupted by one of 2 minigames.
The 1st of these minigames is “Talk Profile.” In it, you question someone to find out more about them—for example, there are multiple times where this comes up when you encounter a suspect. Most of the time, these minigames follow a pattern: use the “think” option to choose what you will say to the person next, use the “talk” option to test if the option you choose works, then either move on to the next set of questions and repeat the process or use the “think” option to choose a different response. There is no penalty for picking an incorrect option, the game will just inform you that what you choose doesn’t make sense and then you can use the “think” option to choose a different response.
The 2nd minigame, “Investigation,” is much less forgiving. It makes you search a room or building with a cursor to find an item or a set of items. The problem is, nothing is done to make these items stand out so there would be times where I stared at the screen for 10 minutes looking for something out-of-place, flinging the cursor every which way all the while. The game does have some mercy on you though, the cursor will turn blue if whatever part of the background its on can be investigated.
Starting a new game will allow you to pick a case to play, either the case bearing the game’s title, or another smaller case. From what I can tell, these alternate cases play more or less the same as the main case, just with a different story.
Overall I enjoyed playing this game, even if most of the time was spent watching the game rather than playing it. As such, I think a fair rating for it would be 7/10.
Check Out the Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk Nintendo 3DS Trailer:
Nintendo 3DS Review
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Overall Score - 7/107/10
I am a recent Computer Science/Game Development Programming Chapman University Graduate. I am a life long enthusiast of computer/video gaming and my favorite game genres are adventure, choice-driven stories, fighting, and racing. My favorite game/movie series include but aren't limited to 'Legend of Zelda'; 'Dragon Age'; 'Persona'; 'Sonic the Hedgehog'; 'Mario'; 'Metroid' ;'Megaman'; 'Naruto'; 'Batman'; 'Spiderman'; 'Star Wars'; and 'Star Trek.'
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