Chinatown
Chinatown Detective Agency proposes us to follow the adventures of Amira Darma, an old rising star of Interpol, today at the head of the private detective company that gives its name to the game. Because it is difficult To meet the two ends in this futuristic Singapore, Amira must choose carefully with whom she wishes to work before a former colleague solicits her help for a mysterious affair that could plunge the city into chaos. The scenario is, however, too much "already-vu" to be truly thrilling.
Hey, Google ?
If Chinatown Detective Agency seems very classic on paper, with his heroin very clicked although amazingly sober and his characters with obscure motivations, the gameplay is more original. This is indeed far from the classic point & click where the solution is hidden in the game. As the game says it very quickly, here you do not play the detective, you are the detective. It's up to you to search, on the Internet outside the game, to decode the clues that the game has left at your disposal. The first case asks you for example to find the author of a quote, another to connect a character of novel to the work of which he came from.
In this, the themes addressed by the game are rather varied and it is the true strong point of the title. Each of the three customers for whom you can work seems to have his specialty and the game asks you to choose a way for the exclusion of the other two. What add a semblance of playback to the game. I met to infiltrate a team of art robbers in different business turning around paintings more or less famous, but I would have been able to help the heir to a collection of historical objects to return them to their countries of origin. This divergence in the frame of history is however only temporary since the game ends up bringing you back on a common final investigation. In short, this investigation aspect seems to be varied and Google is your best friend during the game. However, some elements diminish the impact of this good idea.
I do not have the time
The question of time thus regularly becomes a chore in Chinatown Detective Agency. It is indeed common that the player spends his time waiting. Wait for the opening hours of the public building in which it must go. Wait for an hour for an appointment because it is technically possible to miss a mission because you were late. Or, the most common, wait for the time of its flight to an airport. Because, according to the path you take, the game can make you enormously travel, from Singapore to Mexico, going through London or New Dehli. And for each of these flights, you will have to wait before embarking, which is not my definition of "fun".
Strangely, the game does not ask you all the time to wait for the right schedule, which gives a little feeling that this is a balance of a planned gaming system that has not been did not make his way to the final game. This story of time poses a more embarrassing problem with the gameplay of the game. I remind you that this one assumes that you do research outside the game. And I have not yet specified that it is impossible to save during a mission. Do you feel the problem? Gagné: The game sometimes asks you to search in a limited period of time. It's fortunately rare, but quite frustrating when it happens, especially when the technical aspect of the game gets involved.
bugs in mess
We must greet the translation effort that was made on Chinatown Detective Agency. The texts of the game have thus been totally translated into French and, if the game does not avoid some errors (the spelling of names seems rather random in the Singapore of 2032), it remains pretty understandable for it to be not blocking. Unfortunately, we can not say as many of some visual choices. I am usually good customer games made in pixel art. Chinatown Detective Agency is no exception, especially with regard to environments. It's often very pretty, no problem. On the other hand, it is difficult for me to be convinced by this artistic choice when it comes to recognizing paintings. It quickly turns the pixel porridge, as shown in the screenshot that accompanies this paragraph.
However, it is the lack of finishes that constitutes the real kills the love of this game. The latter offers dubbings, but they seem incomplete, some characters stopping thus to speak in full dialogue, when they do not repeat a dialogue that has nothing to do with the text. Even the sound part goes there, with atmosphere loops superimposed on either. Nevertheless, the worst may be that some puzzles are victims of this lack of finish. The sequence that asks you to decode an audio walrus signal is not only difficult to audible, but the expected response... does not match the code provided by the game, including when you request a help (pay) one of your assistants. Just as embarrassing, some correct answers to riddles can be refused by the game for reasons sometimes as ridiculous as the lack of an accent. If we add that the game does not allow you to save at will (and do not even give you the opportunity to do it manually before the end of the prologue), the addition begins to be a little too salty.
Conclusion
I was a little afraid at the moment to begin that this mechanics of research to be done outside the game leads straight to game solutions. This is finally little the case and it is regrettable that the main problems of Chinatown Detective Agency come from the game itself. If its riddles are often the strong point, the game as a whole is benchmark, undermined by its imperfect finish and by bugs that would have been well.
_Test made on PC by Grim from a version provided by the publisher.
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