Review by: Brandon "Providence" Cackowski-Schnell

If you're thinking of picking up Again because you loved Hotel Dusk and are ready for another helping of Cing's adventure game / interactive thriller mash-up style, well take my advice and put that thirty bucks towards a hammer and a copy of Hotel Dusk. Then take the hammer, hit yourself in the head hard enough to make yourself forget all about Hotel Dusk and replay it because Again doesn't live up to the same standards of Cing's previous releases and instead provides a boring, plodding game built around a police investigation you can solve well before the protagonist does yet you're dragged along until the end.

Nineteen years ago a killer dubbed Providence embarked on a spree of murders that took the lives of six people, including the parents of FBI agent Johnathan Weaver. When a string of murders start back up again, all bearing the distinctive Eye of Providence cut from a US dollar bill, who else would you bring in to look into the crimes but one of the only survivors of the original murders? Wait, what? Apparently, in the world of Again, FBI agents are in such short supply that all concerns of impartiality and conflict of interest are completely thrown out the window. No matter, Agent "J" Weaver and his steadfast partner Kate Completelyforgettable are on the case and Providence better look out!

Turns out that despite his personal connection to the case, or maybe because of it, I'm not really sure, Agent J has a special talent that will help him crack this case, namely the ability to psychically see into the past and get glimpses of what took place when the crime went down. When you're not driving around speaking to suspects and witnesses in the usual adventure game style, the psychic flashbacks are the game's main gameplay mechanics. While flashing back, the DS, held like a book in the usual Cing style, shows the past on the left screen and the present on the touchscreen.

When J, in first person view, comes across something about the scene that differs between past and present he can focus in on the difference and get a glimpse of what happened in the past. In some cases the differences are apparent and the future can be seen readily, in others, J will have to manipulate the present environment to make it match the past before the past can be seen. Once all of the events have been witnessed, you'll have to pick the order in which the events took place and then all will be revealed.

The psychic stuff starts off well enough but soon becomes somewhat of a pixel hunting chore. If J focuses in on the wrong thing he'll lose health and eventually will have a stroke or something and you'll have to start the whole sequence all over again. It can be confusing keeping straight if you're supposed to be focusing on things that are there in the past, but not in the present, or vice versa. Add to this the fact that you won't always be able to glimpse all sequences with the items in hand, a fact the game keeps to itself, and you may find yourself causing poor Agent J to bleed out in a parking garage because you kept focusing in on non-existent oil stains.