Ghost Trick
T3 Rating
5Unique, amusing and often comically dark, Ghost Trick is a thoroughly entertaining tale.
Ghost Trick Review
by on October 26, 2012
Wouldn’t the ability to possess inanimate objects be awesome? Well, there’s a catch. Of course there’s a catch – you have to be dead first. That’s the unfortunate position that the hero of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective finds himself in at the start of this innovative, quirky puzzler.
Having been assassinated, it’s up to our hero – who also happens to be suffering from memory loss – to travel from object to object, using a sort of soul transference technique. Then, by manipulating objects he can alter the outcomes of other characters’ lives, and in the process, to find out the secret of his own past.
There are three main techniques at the player’s disposal. You can possess objects as mentioned, perhaps causing a large ball to squash an enemy, switch on a TV as a distraction, or locate hidden objects that other characters might need. Also, you can travel from location to location along telephone lines. And thirdly, you can turn back time in four minute chunks to just before a character’s death, so you can watch events unfold, and figure out how to solve the puzzle.
The first few chapters’ pace is a little pedestrian, because there’s a lot of backstory to be delivered. Also, there are detailed tutorial puzzles to complete, so that you are able to get your head around the freaky premise. But the story here is so charming and wittily written, and the gameplay so engaging, that this hardly seems to matter.
It would be stretching to call it a work of genius, but Ghost Trick is certainly unique as far as a quick scan of our gaming memory banks can ascertain. Add to this the dark hearted, well-written, farcical story and we challenge you not to feel utterly compelled to finish it, and enjoy every second in doing so. To unlock all the chapters through an in-app purchase costs £6.99, which is at the higher end of app pricing, but in this instance, it’s money well spent.
Download this app: Granny Smith for iPad
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Review courtesy of Tap!
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