Review by: Brandon "Four Minutes" Cackowski-Schnell

Based on his previous body of work with the Ace Attorney series, it's not hard to guess what you'll get in a Shu Takumi game. Lovable, kooky characters trying to solve a mystery through the use of a simple yet engaging gameplay element. All of these things are present Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective but where the Ace Attorney games got longer and longer as time went on, with increasingly complicated stories and added gameplay hooks, Ghost Trick is almost a complete reversal. The endearing characters are still there but the story is told at a much faster pace and the gameplay element stays simple even if the puzzles get more and more complex. It's a formula that works exceedingly well, providing one of the best adventure games on the DS and a fantastic way to start the new gaming year.

In the game you play a ghost, as the title would suggest, who comes into existence in a junk yard, next to the corpse of a strange, pointy haired man. Not knowing exactly what's going on you soon find yourself counseled by a desk lamp and told that your only hope of recovering your lost memories lies in solving your murder as well as helping prevent the murder of a plucky, young detective. Oh and you only have the evening to accomplish this task as by morning you'll cease to exist.

Luckily as a ghost you're not completely powerless, leading us to the "trick" part of the title. As a ghost you can move short distances from inanimate object to inanimate object, sometimes manipulating them once you reach your destination. Maybe you'll lower a hook and chain, maybe you can make an umbrella open, maybe you can make a hat fall off of a shelf. Switching into ghost mode freezes time, allowing you to make timed jumps when necessary to traverse the environment.

In addition to manipulating objects, if you come across a dead person, you can speak to their ghost, provided they were conscious when they died, and better still, rewind time to four minutes before their death. This last part is key as a good chunk of the game is spent preventing the deaths of others, including the aforementioned detective, a woman named Lynne who dies more times than a South Park grade schooler. Finally, your spectral powers allow you to travel across the phone lines provided you can jump to a phone while it's in use allowing you to add the number on the other end to your spectral rolodex.

It's a simple set of powers but the game's designers are able to build some pretty complex puzzles around them, all of which are extremely generous in how they let the player fail without serious consequences. When in the past, you have four minutes to alter the fate of the intended victim however if you don't save them, you can simply go back to the beginning of the four minutes and start all over again, usually with some new bit of knowledge obtained through the act of failing. In addition, any time the victim's fate is altered, even slightly, it acts as a save point of sorts, as well as provides more time to work with. If you manage to fail after the fate change, you can choose to either start all over again, or start after the fate change. It's an extremely generous system that allows for copious amounts of trial and error without ever making the player feel like things are hopeless. Sure it may take you a number of tries, but you never feel like the game is slapping you on the wrist for getting things wrong.