Trace Memory for Nintendo DS

Creepy mysteries always make me happy. This is the appeal, for me, of the game Trace Memory. It was designed for the Nintendo DS system to take advantage of the DS touchpad, and is story based. The main character is 14-year-old Ashley Mizuki Robbins who is searching for her father on Blood Edward Island. Obviously, the game is designed to appeal to the Nancy Drew set. Ashley is blond like Nancy Drew and an inquisitive teenager like Nancy Drew.

Giving the game a story-explore-puzzle format was a good choice. Not everything is a pixel hunt. I get the idea that the makers of this game made it fairly easy on purpose. In this game, you see an object that you will need later and the game pretty much hands it to you. When you get to the stage where you need the object, the dialog says, "hey I have this object let's use it."

Exploring the environment with the touch screen is pretty cool. It is so much easier than having to thumb about with a controller that's too big for my hands(HELLO SONY PLAYSTATION). I'm pretty surprised at how good the graphics are in this game, given that I'm playing it on a DS. Since I go for visually appealing in a big way, this keeps me interested in exploring.

The puzzles are a little on the simple side for me, but if I were 14 and had just started playing games, I would really appreciate the simplicity. If the game had a few more puzzles, they could probably increase in complexity so that a new player would be able to figure out the more complicated puzzles after having played the simple ones earlier in the game. The puzzles that I've played so far are moving a rock and brushing away rust on an old plaque. As I said, they are very simple. I'm hoping as I progress there will be something more challenging.

What I really don't like about this game is the way the game handles dialog. Simply put, it's annoying. A character will say a sentence, and I have to tap the touchscreen to advance the dialog. Repetitively tapping the screen to get the character's next line is not very exciting especially when the dialog is lengthy enough to fill pages in a book. I also noted that there are 3 different ways dialog happens between characters. That's too much, and there was no obvious reason why there should be 3 different ways for characters to talk too each other. I'm guessing there were 3 different programmers for different sets of dialog who each decided that their dialog interface was best.

Overall, Trace Memory is an enjoyable game. I like the way the gameplay takes advantage of the DS touch screen. The story and the environment both keep me interested. I can definitely tell that it was meant for someone younger. Hopefully since the Studios are starting to realize that girls and women play games too, I will see some titles that are similar Trace Memory but incorporate more difficult puzzles and a more mature plot.