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.