Before examining the evidence of Unsolved Crimes, let’s begin with a quick quiz.

A timed series of one hundred-plus questions, each marked for correctness and contributing to a final grade or outright failure and premature dismissal, sounds like:

A) High school all over again
B) Qualifying exam for competitive position
C) Yearly income tax forms
D) A fun way to spend time on the Nintendo DS

If you answered any combination of A, B, or C above but not the all-important D, the case is closed already, as Unsolved Crimes will not be for you. But if the query seems unfairly loaded at first, it’s not nearly as far-fetched as it might seem. Adventure gamers embrace puzzles as a cerebral challenge, after all, and recent DS successes like Brain Age and Professor Layton and the Curious Village have proven that sometimes the best tests are the simplest (if anything but the easiest). So if the prospect of a little intellectual duelling with developers sounds like it just might be entertaining in an academic sort of way, let’s explore the facts of the game in a little more detail.

In Unsolved Crimes, players assume the role of an anonymous new recruit in the Homicide Division of the NYPD. It’s a format we’ve seen before in CSI and Law & Order games, and the concept should have worked just as well here. This time, however, the manual states that you’re “fresh from the academy”, which is a rather unfortunate point the game proceeds to drive home at every conceivable opportunity. I’m pretty sure that “homicide detective” and “clueless rookie” aren’t meant to be synonymous, but here they are, to the player’s detriment.

Over the course of seven distinct and unrelated cases (and an optional tutorial), you’ll team up with your partner, Marcy, in investigating crime scenes and… well, reporting to your boss, Captain Abbot. That’s about it. If you expected traditional detective elements like questioning witnesses or doing any legwork to track down new leads, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Technically you’ll also analyze evidence and testimony, but only in the most superficial sense, as such activities are limited largely to viewing close-ups of your inventory and reading through your case file, most of which is provided for you automatically.

Each case begins with a briefing that establishes the basics, including the only few viable suspects you’ll ever get to consider. Off you go to the crime scene at that point, but never in time to see the actual body or any other people. The best you can hope for is to find clues that others have missed to help flesh out the crime. Given the limited size of the area and scarcity of important objects, it’s amazing that anything was overlooked, but clearly it’s up to you to scour the single-room locations with a more discerning eye.

According to Unsolved Crimes, however, the real secret to finding answers is in asking the right questions, and it’s this element that makes up the bulk of the gameplay. Whenever you discover a new item or fact that the game deems relevant, Marcy will pose a query that needs answering. Cases can include more than fifteen different queries, though many of these are multi-part questions in their own right. It’s unclear whether Marcy herself knows the answers, as her reactions seem to vary, but each answer you give is immediately evaluated as right or wrong. Right answers earn you the right to move on, while wrong answers lead to the loss of a precious “star”, representing Marcy’s level of confidence in your abilities. Select topics can also add stars if answered correctly, but lose them all and you’re instantly turfed off the force for being an incompetent fool.

There are both pros and cons to using a test system as the basis of a game like this, at least in theory. On the plus side, it’s a natural way to help sort through evidence. Unlike many adventures, a crime mystery is a large puzzle in and of itself, and connecting details is like adding small new pieces until it all comes together. And as a facilitator in that sense, Unsolved Crimes certainly succeeds. There’s a very logical progression to each case, and there’s never any concern that you’ll lose track of key details, which is especially important in a handheld game where play sessions can be shorter and more sporadic. There’s also something to be said for doling out challenge-and-reward in smaller increments than traditional adventures. It’s practically impossible to get stuck in this game, and hearing the triumphant music play as “RIGHT” splashes across the screen is an ever-tangible goal in drawing you forward to the next query.

The downside to this approach is that it’s all so very linear and blatantly orchestrated. The thrill of a mystery comes from identifying the connections yourself, in a way that incessant hand-holding never allows. The key to balancing these elements is in using moderation, but it’s a lesson Unsolved Crimes never learns. Where games like Hotel Dusk and the latest Sherlock Holmes mysteries use tests as a small, supplemental activity, here it is far and away the predominant feature that exhausts its welcome long before the game is over. And the whole grading idea gets a giant “fail” as well. It’s meant to add consequence to your decisions, obviously, but does so in such a staggeringly artificial way that it does more harm than good. If there’s ever any doubt that you’re playing a game and that your presence really isn’t required to solve its mysteries, Unsolved Crimes reminds you of it constantly. There’s a final scoring summary at the end of each case, which penalizes you for number of mistakes, total time, and hints used. That alone should have been enough, leaving players to feel like real detectives in the meantime.

Adding to the disappointment is the poor execution on too many occasions. The vast majority of questions are multiple choice, and while some are so obvious you can succeed by process of elimination alone, others are far too ambiguous. The latter represent only a small fraction of the total questions overall, but I still lost count of the times that a perfectly valid answer was deemed incorrect with no recourse. One question asks why two liquids both rolled to the right. The first two possible answers are: 1) Both liquids; 2) Moved the same way. Yes, you read right, and your guess is as good as mine. Presumably this is just a text error, but console yourself with that knowledge when you’re graded on it. Worse still are the few questions whose answers are blatantly wrong. This is no sour grapes on my part, as one such example proceeded to confirm that its answer was wrong immediately afterwards. I felt vindicated but no happier as I disgustedly reloaded my latest save, which you can fortunately record at any time (further undermining the value of the grade system in the first place).