A year ago, I reviewed Touch Detective, the debut Nintendo DS adventure game from Japanese developer BeeWorks and publisher Atlus. As the third adventure game to come out for the handheld system after the excellent Trace Memory and Phoenix Wright, Touch Detective had large shoes to fill, and it didn't fill them very well. With its pixel hunts, obscure puzzles, and punishingly linear gameplay, the game suffered from pretty much every pitfall an adventure game can suffer from, and the fact that it did next to nothing with the DS's unique capabilities made it no better than a mediocre PC game. At the time, it was one of the few DS adventure games out there and helped fill the void until Hotel Dusk and Phoenix Wright 2 came out, but on the whole, Touch Detective struck me as extremely average.

So here I am one year later reviewing the sequel, Touch Detective 2½. (I'm not sure what the point of that ½ is, other than to be cute. In an amusing/annoying twist, the font Atlus used for the manual didn't display the ½ correctly so the game is referred to as "Touch Detective 2?" throughout—perhaps a more fitting title, as in, "They really made a sequel to Touch Detective?") Based on the screenshots and Atlus' marketing materials, I had a hunch going in that the game I was about to play would be more or less identical to the first. Still, some little part of me was hoping for an improvement, anything to show that the designers had paid attention to the criticisms of the first game and tweaked it to become, if not something awesome, then at least something better. But alas, it was not to be. Touch Detective 2½? On the whole, it's pretty average.

The sequel's premise is identical to the first game. You play as Mackenzie, a newly appointed member of the Great Detective Society and official "touch detective." (What exactly a "touch detective" is seems to be something only Mackenzie understands, and even though people ask her what it means throughout the game, she never wants to talk about it.) Mackenzie is a little girl who lives with her butler Cromwell and mushroom sidekick Funghi. Her cases usually involve her two closest friends, the conniving detective wannabe Chloe and well-meaning bubblehead Penelope. Each case, or "episode," as the game calls them, follows a simple formula. Someone presents Mackenzie with a problem (i.e. all the colored noodles in the town have been stolen), and Mackenzie must figure out who did it. Her methods of investigation are very simple: talk to people and "touch" things with the stylus to pick them up or use them. Yep, that's about it.

Each episode has a central theme or location, such as the annual noodle festival, at which all the townsfolk have gathered to dance, play games, and (you guessed it) eat noodles. Much of the investigation unfolds in this main location, but in most of the cases Mackenzie can also traipse around town to various other places, accessible via a world map. In this way, you can question people who are not directly involved in the action, collect seemingly irrelevant but ultimately useful items, and occasionally get help from Cromwell.

The case usually takes a deeper turn somewhere in the middle. In the noodle example, which is Touch Detective 2½'s first case, it turns out that not only have the town's colored noodles been stolen, but so has a very important item that could ultimately lead to the entire town's downfall. Even when the stakes are supposedly high, the case is always treated with a blasé, sing-song attitude that reminds you these are just children playing make-believe. One could argue that Touch Detective 2½ is a comedy game and putting the characters in true danger isn't necessary, but the fact that the cases never seem all that important—even to the characters—and are often downright silly made it hard for me to care about what I was being asked to do. (This may be due in part to localization issues, where the gravity of the situation hasn't been translated well into English, but I'm not willing to put all of the blame on iffy translation.) The sole exception, a case involving ghosts and lost love, stood apart to me as the best of the bunch; I only wish more of the content followed that episode's lead.

There are five cases this time around, one more than in the previous game. You have to play the cases in order, but there is a "bonus case" that you can distract yourself with between episodes (more on this below). The stories are linked by the Cornstalker, a common enemy who looks, surprisingly enough, like a stalk of corn in a superhero outfit. The Cornstalker generally poofs into the episode near the end, and even though Mackenzie cracks the case, the guy always gets away. This common thread running through the episodes is new to Touch Detective 2½, initially giving me hope that the game would have more depth than its prequel, but unfortunately the Cornstalker storyline is not well executed. Although the cases seemed to be building to a climax, the ending was abrupt and didn't tie anything together. The villain didn't detract from the game, but even as the credits rolled I was so confused by his never-adequately-explained presence, I was left wondering why the designers bothered with him at all.

Other new characters include Daria, a fellow girl detective who, in spite of her mission to catch the Cornstalker, usually bows out to let Mackenzie do all the work; Connor, the proprietor of the shopping plaza's new antique shop, whom Mackenzie has a crush on; Mayor Tom, a talking turkey with such an inflated sense of importance he has a museum devoted to him; and the artist, a big-lipped lady obsessed with two things: art and noodles. These characters show up in multiple cases. Then there are the guest stars who play major roles in a single episode's storyline, such as Harrison (a big, burly archeologist who reminds me of Sweetums from the Muppet Show) and the scary, mace-wielding train conductor. There are also some returning characters from the last game, including Beatrice, the bird-like condominium owner; the bakery lady; and the ghost-faced locals. New players may be a little lost as to the roles of these recurring characters, but you'll figure them out quickly. I only noticed a couple of points where knowledge of the previous game would have been useful, and those were during the bonus case and didn't really have an impact on the gameplay.