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Review for Again

Again
Again

In March 2010, Japanese developer Cing filed for bankruptcy. A studio that championed adventure games on consoles with releases like Another Code / Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk on the Nintendo DS, Cing has created a handful of unique, unapologetically story-centric games infused with imaginative console-specific gameplay. Their most recent localized title, and possibly their last in English, has many of the same principles as their earlier games—this time with a distinctly western slant. Again is similar to Hotel Dusk in many ways, but the premise, visuals, and gameplay feel more like a cross between CSI and Cold Case than Cing’s usual artsy style.

Again’s protagonist is Jonathan Weaver, a brooding FBI agent who goes by the look-how-cool-I-am nickname “J.” Together with his partner, a perky blonde named Kate Hathaway, J is tasked with reinvestigating a 19-year-old string of murders attributed to Providence, an unidentified serial killer who left an “Eye of Providence” (the graphic of an eye floating above a pyramid that’s featured on American dollar bills) beside each of his victims. For J, this investigation isn’t simply another day at the office; it’s personal. He has a strong connection to the original murders, and as the game opens, Providence has just contacted him to let him know that history is on the verge of repeating. Then a new murder is committed under the exact same circumstances as the first one so many years before. Now J and Kate need to figure out who the killer is—and how to stop him—before the gory killing spree happens all over again.

Each of Cing’s DS games has had distinct artwork, and Again is no exception, although at a glance it appears much more mainstream than the company’s previous titles. Like in Hotel Dusk, the characters sport thick white outlines, subtle hand-drawn hatch marks, and a handful of key expressions, but Again’s characters are portrayed by live actors. The effect is a cross between comical and creepy. Gestures are often over-the-top in a way that’s harder to forgive of a real person than an animated character, but at least they’re more expressive than the static images employed in many other DS games. The use of real actors is part of what makes this game feel much like a television show, and though their overacting can be irritating, it was a bold choice that makes the game stand out for its realism. The environments themselves are presented in 3D and are generally well rendered, considering the DS’s limitations, while the game’s gritty artwork and occasional FMV cutscenes are supplemented by stylish touches like a silhouetted J walking across the width of both screens as a new location sweeps into view.

While playing Again, you hold the DS vertically, with the top screen on the left and the touch screen on the right (if you’re right-handed; the game accommodates lefties as well). Locations are freely explored in first-person perspective using the +Control pad or buttons. The direct control navigation works pretty well, but I frequently encountered problems investigating small or awkwardly-placed items—J would say I needed to get closer to see an item, but attempting to draw closer would only result in moving it off the bottom or side of the screen. The camera can be repositioned somewhat by dragging the stylus, but the combination of controls is not always fluid.

Although J and Kate do briefly look into the new Providence murders with help from the police department, their main task is to dig into the long-unsolved cases to uncover any overlooked details that might help them identify the killer. As such, the game plays like an episode of Cold Case, with J and Kate interviewing old witnesses and visiting past crime scenes to look for new evidence. The Providence killer has eluded justice for two decades, but the FBI has a leg up this time around, thanks to J’s supernatural powers. Upon visiting a location where a crime has occurred, J sees glimpses of the past, and by manipulating crime scenes in the present to match how they once looked, he can coax out visions of what went down 19 years ago. This is the twist that makes Again more than just another CSI knock-off—and it’s a good thing, because the gameplay associated with J’s psychic abilities is by far Again’s most compelling feature.

J’s father has recollections of him “seeing” past crimes while he was growing up, but this is the FBI agent’s first real brush with his sixth sense, so the player gets to learn how it works along with him. The game’s initial scene is a tutorial that lays out the basics. During J’s visions, the past and present appear in a split screen, with the past on one screen in sepia tones and the present in full color on the other (the touch screen). You can tap the stylus on items you wish to look at and J will comment on them, sometimes tipping you off to significant areas that relate to the murder in the past.

During these segments, you must pay special attention to the differences between the past and present. For example, in one scene there’s a bloodstain on the floor in the past, but the floor has been cleaned up in the present. It stands to reason that the events leading up to the spilling of blood would be useful for J to “see” if he’s going to piece together what happened during the murder, so this is an area worthy of investigation, even though there’s nothing there in the present day. Holding down the stylus on such areas triggers J’s vision of the past, but in most cases you need to do something to the environment to mimic how it used to look before J can see what happened. This might mean using the stylus to nudge a shower curtain from its closed position to open, or taking an item from your inventory and setting it down in a strategic location. The logic doesn’t always quite work—sometimes the scene needs to be exactly like it was in the past before J’s vision will kick in, while in other cases the requirements aren’t as strict—but I quickly got the hang of what the game wanted me to do, and found these the most imaginative and intriguing gameplay segments.

The past visions are shown as grainy movies, with the faces of victims and the killer only coming into view as J pieces together the relevant details. After you have unlocked all of the visions in a particular area, you must order the events correctly so J can review the entire scene and surmise what originally happened. This part is a bit repetitive, since you’re forced to sit through the same clips a second time, but at this point J generally draws a new conclusion about the murders that moves the story forward, so watching the clips again does provide a payoff.

Unfortunately, J’s visions are few and far between, particularly at the beginning of the game when you’re forced to carry on establishing dialogue with numerous characters before the action really kicks in. (In fact, by the time I reached the first real vision, I’d already forgotten most of the skills I learned in the tutorial and had to consult the game’s manual to remind myself of my objective.) The visions also come with an aggravating caveat: it’s possible to run down J’s psychic health, which is represented by a meter at the top of the screen, by investigating too many non-essential areas. This meter replenishes every time J encounters a new crime scene, but if at any point it depletes entirely, it’s Game Over. Even though you’re given the opportunity to restart the scene from the beginning with a full health meter, I still found this mechanic frustrating—especially when I was attempting to investigate areas the game had led me to believe were important, only to learn that I needed to do something else first to make J understand the significance. For an FBI agent, he’s a bit slow on the uptake.

That’s actually my biggest gripe about Again: J and Kate are seriously oblivious, to the point where I started to feel like maybe I had some extrasensory powers of my own. The game telegraphs major story points to a ridiculous degree, and I frequently picked up on a “surprise” twist a good twenty or thirty minutes before J and Kate got the hint. This didn’t make me feel particularly smart; on the contrary, I was annoyed that the storyline was so transparent and my supposed partners so dense. The story does have some interesting twists and turns as the mysteries of the original Providence killings begin to fall into place, but it’s disappointing that these weren’t better paced and a bit more subtle.

More than half of the game’s content consists of conversations between J, Kate, the various suspects and other characters. Some of this back-and-forth progresses automatically, while other conversations are interactive. During interactive dialogue, a list of questions appears on the touch screen, and the topic you want to explore can be selected with a tap of the stylus. When people are speaking, subtitles appear on the right, with the left screen transitioning between the characters much like a TV show’s camera cuts, but in a way that can become dizzying. Although most of the conversations succeed only in moving the story forward and enlightening J and Kate about the details of the case, at a few points dialogue is used as a sort of showdown, with J being pressed to come up with the correct answers to posed questions using information he’s picked up. I remember disliking similar segments in Hotel Dusk, but in Again most of these sequences make sense in context and flow well.

Again features an archetypical cast reminiscent of the ensemble in a television crime drama. J and Kate’s cohorts include Lane Martinez, an uncooperative police investigator suspicious of the FBI’s involvement in his case; Maureen Yashima, a flirtatious forensic specialist willing to bend the rules whenever J asks for a favor; by-the-book FBI supervisor Henry Mills, who wants this case solved yesterday; and Hugo Watts, an eager reporter who’s all too happy to help dig up dirt on the suspects. There are also a slew of witnesses, family members, and interested parties related to the old murders who can be pumped for information and leads. These supporting characters are fairly one-dimensional and mainly serve as props to move the story along, so there's little chance to form any real attachment to them. There is no voice acting, but the game’s soundtrack is appropriately suspenseful, with a standout inclusion of Ave Maria during a key scene.

Although there are points where the game forces you to go straight from one place to another, most of the time you have a long list of locations that you can visit, and something new usually happens each time you go to one. In some ways this is unrealistic—there’s no reason to expect that visiting someone who witnessed the first murder 19 years ago, after you’ve already closed the book on that aspect of the Providence killings, would yield useful information later in the investigation—but it left me feeling like I always had something to try, even when it seemed I might be stuck. As a result, I never got so stuck that I couldn’t continue.

In addition to the dialogues and past vision sequences, Again has a smattering of standard adventure game puzzles. In one, you must push office furniture around a storage room, slider-style, to reach a blocked desk; in another, you’ll reassemble a shattered item by rotating and dragging fragments into the correct positions. Although some of these feel shoehorned into the investigation, Again has enough well-integrated gameplay that the occasional inorganic puzzle isn’t overly offensive. And there are plenty of DS-specific puzzle examples, a convention Cing has explored in all of their releases for Nintendo’s handheld. These aren’t complicated—mostly you’re simply using the stylus to nudge items into the correct position—but they’re fine supplements to the story and make natural use of the DS’s touch capabilities.

Again has eleven chapters that correspond to different days of the investigation. You’re automatically prompted to save in one of three save slots when you reach the end of a chapter, and you can also save at will during most of the game. (Annoyingly, J sometimes goes straight into vision mode without giving you this opportunity.) Other menu options include a log of all character dialogue—very useful for players who get overzealous while tapping through the lines—and an inventory that’s organized by documents, photos, and items. Occasionally objects can be shown to other characters or used to trigger past visions, but Again doesn’t have many traditional inventory puzzles in the “use this on that” sense.

In all, Again took me about ten hours to play, and despite often feeling like I was smarter than the FBI, I was engrossed most of the way through. The story goes in a truly interesting direction early on, which gave me plenty to speculate about initially. But the longer I played, the weirder and more unbelievable the story became, culminating in a frustrating ending. Where earlier J had been the last guy around to pick up on extremely obvious clues, in the final chapters he makes logic leaps that I was unable to follow. The climactic showdown between him and the killer is melodramatic and unnatural, and a poignant subplot related to J’s personal connection to the murders is not satisfactorily resolved. Worst of all, the game ends with a huge cliffhanger that’s all the more unsatisfying due to the unlikelihood of ever getting a sequel. The weak finish is too bad, because for quite a while I really liked where the story appeared to be going.

For narrative-driven adventures, I tend to recommend games with stories that really grab me, and dock points even if a game has decent gameplay when the story’s not up to snuff. In the case of Again, I’m making an exception. This game has a clever premise with gameplay to support it, and even though the story falls way short of its promise, players who go into it with the right expectations will find a lot to like here. Under different circumstances, I’d wrap up by lauding Cing’s effort and looking forward to a future release that built on the qualities introduced here, but knowing this is potentially the last game we’ll play from Cing, I’ll settle for being happy with what they’ve given us. Thanks to Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, and now Again, adventure gamers have had an entertaining glimpse of what the Nintendo DS can offer. I only wish we could see more.

Our Verdict:

Again could have been better, but it’s still a must-play for fans of Cing’s other games—and if you’re willing to forgive some story issues to experience the creative gameplay, it’s worth checking out by any DS owner who enjoys crime drama.

GAME INFO Again is an adventure game by Cing released in 2010 for DS. It has a Live Action, Stylized art style and is played in a perspective.

The Good:

  • Intriguing premise and psychic "past vision" gameplay
  • Engrossing story early on
  • Puzzles are well-integrated and make good use of DS touch capabilities

The Bad:

  • Plot twists are overly telegraphed
  • Story doesn’t live up to its potential
  • Unbelievable ending that finishes with a frustrating cliffhanger

The Good:

  • Intriguing premise and psychic "past vision" gameplay
  • Engrossing story early on
  • Puzzles are well-integrated and make good use of DS touch capabilities

The Bad:

  • Plot twists are overly telegraphed
  • Story doesn’t live up to its potential
  • Unbelievable ending that finishes with a frustrating cliffhanger
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