Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Part 2)

Let's talk about the bible.

Except not really. I kind of want to talk about the trend of pulling from mythology, Christian or otherwise, for other works of fiction. But there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you are a competent writer. And really, most people who completely rely on outside sources for their story... are not competent writers. That's why that they need to rely on existing sources. Now, I'm not going to say ALL people who do that are bad writers because that's simply not true. The amount of bad writers who base their stuff on mythology are probably equal to the percentage of bad writers who use completely original material. But that's not really the point. In fact, I started watching old episodes of Justice League midway through this paragraph, so I kind of forget what the point is.

But anyway, Cate West. Upon further thought, I realize this will probably be shorter than I'd like exactly as long as normal and not longer but... there really isn't much plot in the game to go on. Every little bit of the plot is like a stepping stone to more gameplay. Incredibly dumb stepping stones that make you feel like an idiot whenever you hop on them. And not just an idiot, but a bad person. That is the power of these stepping stones. But anyway, plot.

You're Cate West. You're a novelist in America... like, Rhode Island or something. General New England area. I'd like to point out that, since you are a novelist instead of an attorney, this actually makes you less qualified to investigate crime scenes than Phoenix Wright and that's just funny.


It really is.

I know the police sometimes employ psychics to solve murders, but to my knowledge not dozens of times in the same month or two and god dammit, they look for actual evidence, not just the psychic's word. Do you have any idea what kind of legal system that would be? It would be freaking madness. I'm honestly kind of fuzzy as to why they even brought her in. I think it had something to do with her father being killed years ago or something... and now that I think about it, I don't recall that plot thread ever being resolved. But yeah. Game starts off, you're Cate West and
YOUR PARENTS ARE DEAAAAAAAAAAAD!!

Or at least your dad is. I don't recall any mention of your mom. Your mom being Cate West's mom, but I think this review will go funnier if I just keep pretending that you are Cate West. Indulge me, I'm a funny man. Anyway, you're at your book signing and you meet this guy who kind of looks like Captain America without the costume. Blond hair, blue eyes, all American. Well, he would look like that if the art wasn't kind of meh.


Captain America apparently thinks he's Superman.

Anyway, there's this "fateful moment" kind of deal that has been done a million times before, will be done a million times again, and is nothing special. Your BFF Wesley (more like Star Trek Wesley than "As You Wish" Wesley), who is basically your equivalent of Larry Butz in degrees of lameness and uselessness, but not even close to as funny. He's basically a completely worthless human being, who is also the only thing that drives the plot of this game into full-blown-retarded. But I'll get to that later.

Anyway, there's a photo or some crap and you're like all "MY FATHER DIED HERE" or something and somehow convince Steve Rogers up there (that's Captain America's real name for the non-nerds.) to let you investigate while you dump Wesley and the book tour to find out about your dead parents. Like Phoenix Wright, every case is a murder case. Okay, apparently not. There's robberies and arson too. Which is nice, actually. Except there's no quirky/interesting characters. Or really, any characters. At all. I think there's some Asian girl that you're also BFFs with but I honestly can't recall and like hell am I playing through this again. If you can't tell, I'm using the term BFF as ironically as I can in text. Which isn't very. Also, this game is so obscure that there really isn't anywhere on the internet that I can find to refresh myself on the plot. No one cares about Cate West. With good damn reason. Damn good reason, even.

But apparently, in this world, people should care about Cate West. She can fucking solve a murder in the bay by finding a hackey-sack in the financial district. And somehow THIS IS EVIDENCE. Did the murderer have the hackey-sack? No. Did he ever see the hackey-sack? Again, no. Has the murderer ever been in the same room as the fucking hackey-sack. NO. FAR BE IT FROM ME TO QUESTION YOUR INFINITE PSYCHIC WISDOM, CATE WEST, BUT EVIDENCE SHOULD TIE THE CRIMINAL TO THE CRIME. *FUME FUME*

So you solve a bunch of murders and there's some strained and painful dialogue about how they have nothing to do with each other and the subjects are all talking about voices in their heads. The voices in their heads thing is important, so remember it for later. Apparently there's this mystery guy referred to only as W. He's dark and mysterious and murderous and the villain of the game, appearing perpetually in shadow even when he's in broad daylight. He'd be hilariously contrived if they put even the slightest bit of character into him. Just the slightest bit. But nope. He's just "mwahahaha evil"


Kind of like this, but you see that chocolate? That has more character than W.

So W is somehow responsible for all these murders despite not being the one who actually did them. We already have a psychic, so clearly we can't rule out "Magic," "Death Note" or "Alien Abduction". Hey, I do not throw away my cards until I am absolutely sure they are worthless.

But anyway, eventually you meet this old lady. Who, by virtue of being an old lady and getting more characterization than "Where are my pills?", is the coolest person in this game. She gives you clues or something and then her house burns down. Hooray! Cate is like "OH SHIT, IS SHE OKAY?" and the cops are like "WE CAN'T FIND HER." So they move on and never, ever mention her again.

Anyway, you solve all the murders and put the murderers in jail. Then W kidnaps Wesley and your Asian friend. Oh noes! You and Steve Rogers go to try and confront W and it turns out... W is Wesley! ... ... Yeah. Your best of friend of multiple years is actually a crazy killer guy. I know the W = Wesley thing is obvious when you put it right next to each other, but this seriously has no real build-up and comes completely out of left field, flying at your face and shattering your windshield. Yes, your face has a windshield. You're Cate fucking West, god dammit.

Anyway, he then shoots Steve Rogers. But Steve Rogers is fine, because he's Captain America god dammit.


Shut up, Stark.

And then Wesley explains the plot. Apparently you, Steve Rogers and him are all descendants of the three Magi, Melchior, Balthasar and Caspar. And they each have powers. You (Cate West) have Psychic Powers, Steve Rogers is invulnerable (good thing for a cop to have. You'd think he'd have realized this sooner), and Wesley can control people's minds. Yes, those voices in their head? Wesley. So he mind-controlled them into committing murders. He said he wanted to gather the children of the Magi together. And that's it. They arrest him.

That's fucking it.

They don't say WHY he wanted to gather them all together. What happens then? Does the world end, does Amenhotep rise from the dead, does Jesus come back and they all go out for beers? WHAT?! TELL ME, GAME. TELL ME! Also, they gathered. They were all in the same room. He didn't seem to have a ritual in mind. Although there must be, because they were all within 5 feet of each other in that book store and noting happened then. Unless Jesus bought a copy of Cate's book. Maybe for his Holy Coffee Table. But they don't fucking explain it. Also, you're no closer to solving the mystery of your murdered dad. HOORAY. DEAD PARENTS ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE STORY!

Oh, and one more thing. Remember all those people who were mind slaves and controlled to do crimes? They never get mentioned again. Which means they're still fucking in jail. Cate West, you have wrongfully imprisoned like 20 people for various crimes. Their lives are ruined because of you. RUINED. OVER. WAY TO GO, YOU GLEAMING EMBLEM OF HEROISM. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

I hate you, Cate West. I hate you so much.

Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Part 1)

There is nothing good about this game. Nothing.And I have bestowed upon myself the loathsome task of making you people laugh about it. Go me.

Now, to begin, there is a PC version, a Wii version and a DS version. I bought this game specifically because that crazy lady who lets me call her my girlfriend saw it in a Gamestop and thought it looked cool. I went with it. I tend to go with my gut on obscure little games like this just because. The reward of a good purchase on gut instinct is satisfying. But the bad purchases, in my experiences, are the worst of the worst. I got the DS version, because I like making my tasks needlessly difficult (the PC version had digital downloads and the Wii version didn't exist yet), but also because it was a gift for my lady and she loves her DS.

It took a week of searching Gamestops for it before I bought it off of Amazon.com. It eventually came something like 2 weeks after her birthday and I held on to it for a month or so. It was a used copy, so it was opened already and had a save file on it. As I recall, there was no total play time listed on the game file, just a score. It was large and meant nothing to me. I later found out that the person couldn't have played past the first case. It was an easy tutorial level that explained the gameplay. If only I had understood the signs.

Now, the gameplay. I should say something first. I greatly enjoy iced tea. Now, I should say something relevant. Judging by the description on the back of the box, both my lady and I were expecting a kind of Ace Attorney style of gameplay, except you were a psychic detective. So, you know, someone actually qualified to investigate crime scenes. What I got was a hidden item game with "spot the differences" levels. This was a casual game.

Now, casual games should are not bad things in theory. Even real gamers can enjoy casual games. Pretty much everything Popcap puts out is digital crack cocaine cut with fun.


"Peggle" or "Oh God, When Did The Sun Come Up?"

But casual games kind of have a stigma - rightfully so, at this point - for being designed for idiots. Most mainstream games have the benefit of its target audience having gamer logic. Gamer logic, to those who have it, seems like common sense. It comes from past experiences that "everyone knows about". Gamer logic is a complex thing, but can range from "touch the spikes, you die" to more complicated things, like button awareness. Things like "Right Analog Stick moves the camera" and "Press X to Confirm". This kind of gamer logic can be genre specific and even game series specific. For example, First Person Shooter logic dictates that the best gun will have the least amount of ammo available and Metal Gear logic dictates that a cardboard box with legs is the least suspicious thing ever.


Did you know a man escaped from a French prison like this? It's true!

But anyway, my point. Casual games must be built completely without gamer logic and assume the person playing it has never, ever played a video game before. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. But the thing is, most casual games seem like they're designed for (or possibly by) complete idiots. They're overly simplified and god help you if it has a plot. God help you. Cate West's deranged, mutant offspring of narrative will be discussed in the second half of this review. I'm mainly focusing on the gameplay right now, because I have a lot to say. I'm fucking verbose, remember?

The gameplay. Like I said, it's a hidden item game with spot-the-differences levels. Nothing else. There's actually four kinds of gameplay. There's spot-the-difference, find this list of items, find chunks of these items, and place objects to make both sides match. There's also a "find the culprit!" thing. It's basic stuff. It's like a digital version of family restaurant menus. Here's the thing. The plot has you finding these items to help with murder investigations... but uh... none of the items you find have ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING! They are all completely pointless. Hell, my favorite example is with the find chunks of these items... each level, you have to find like 12 chunks of an item. But you see, most things can't really be cut into 13 recognizable chunks, so there's 4 chunks you have to find like 2 or 3 times each. Thus creating scenarios where you have to find 3 and a half pockets watches and 2 and a third pairs of shoes. And then, after you find these, they form into the actual clue, which will never have anything to do with any of the items you found. Hand to God, I had to find a trumpet and a crab... and the clue turned out to be a GUN!!. TRUMPET PLUS CRAB DOES NOT EQUAL GUN!


See? Math agrees with me!

The entire process is stupid. And the other problem, as odd as it sounds, is that the art designers for the hidden object games are really good. A lot of the stuff almost looks like it was taken from photographs. It's very detailed. But uh, here's the thing. This is what an average screen looks like in the game.


Wow. Just... Wow.

Jumbled as hell, isn't it? Very busy, lots of stuff. Visually confusing? Yeah. One more thing. This is a screenshot from the PC version. Imagine this, crunched down and compressed for the DS version. It's a pain in the fucking ass. God damn, I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hope it dies in the fires of Mount Doom, banished from whence it came. It's agonizing and there's something like a 14 cases in this game with like 5 levels of shit like this each. It was painful to go through.

But it's not BAD gameplay, if you... like this sort of thing. I suppose. But the story... oh god, the story.

I will save it until next time.