Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~ Distant Memories ~ Review— It's A Game

Whoever named this game was trying to hit the character count SO BAD.

Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~ Distant Memories ~ is a game you can purchase with money. I say that, but actually soon you won’t be able to purchase it with money, because like 15 minutes after I started playing this game Nintendo announced they would be halting purchases on the eShop for 3DS and Wii U. I feel like I had some hand in this and I’m sorry.

Because this game is pretty short, like “I beat it within 80 minutes” short, this will be a short analysis of CCCI. No one has abbreviated this game like this until right now.

For the uninformed, former employees at CiNG (the company behind games like Hotel Dusk and Another Code for the DS) came together while at Arc System Works to create this digital-only release on the 3DS eShop. What’s even more remarkable is the fact it got an English release despite the game being so short and the budget seeming to be pretty low. This is probably because of Hotel Dusk’s success that Aksys thought this game would also receive but totally did not.

I’m not going to diss short games. I just finished talking about how Higanbana was the best thing ever, and if we want to go by visual novel standards, that’s basically a collection of short games, some of which can definitely stand on their own. You can definitely create something strong in a short amount of time.

CCCI was not this. But why was it not this? I’m going to break this down into a couple points that are spoiler-free.

Characters

Not counting the side characters because this game is so short it seems unfair to pick them apart, the two protagonists of this story, Koto and Not Kyle Hyde Shounosuke, do not stand out much to me. In particular, Shounosuke is a poor protagonist to me because he mimics so much of Kyle Hyde specifically from Hotel Dusk, which is where I dislike him the most. I think Kyle is at his best in the sequel, Last Window, where he’s a bit more mellowed out and understanding. Him being really rude all the time and constantly trying to snoop in other peoples’ business in Hotel Dusk made me not like him.

Yesss it's sooo quirky to be annoying

Anyways so Shounosuke isn’t fun to watch because he’s so rude, which makes me wonder why Koto puts up with him. Their relationship is not fleshed out in any way or really even touched upon to help me understand this. I do like Koto, but she’s just your average “rookie looking for an opportunity” seen in most detective games.

The Story Itself

Chase: Cold Case Investigations is about investigating a cold case.

Look they even say it in the opening cinematic.

Not going to spoil the story itself, but I found this cold case to be rather… lacking? I don’t know. It was definitely a case that went deeper than you'd expect it to which sounds good on paper, but the execution of it just didn't wow me. The game tries to add in character drama as a means of making the case cooler, but fails because we are not attached to any characters as they have little writing, thus their motives mean very little. Under circumstances where there was a bit more writing attached to both the story and characters, I could easily see this being cool. But it wasn't.

And not particularly related to the story itself, but the characters of Koto and Shounosuke… tend to solve the story by themselves without player input. Rather than being overly handhold-y, it’s almost like they shake the player off and do things themselves with how they come to conclusions so fast.

(This game also has what I like to call an Ever17 Moment, where a critical plot detail/twist is foreshadowed super on-the-nosedly and then in the next scene this plot detail/twist is made known. At that point, you already know the truth because they shoved this not-so-subtle hint in your face and you’re wondering why they think they can be so damn coy about it.)

Good news is there’s only one reading comprehension quiz compared to Hotel Dusk/Last Window/Another Code’s 60000 million reading comprehension quizzes. So it might actually be the best game ever.

When I die I expect God to give me a CiNG reading comprehension quiz about my life and when I fail it He'll send me to hell

The Writing

This is a small nitpick of mine, but I’m often against ADV style visual novels with no overarching narration. An example of this if you haven’t played CCCI is the Ace Attorney series, which is told through the eyes of the protagonist and the text boxes are advanced through dialogue only. If there’s any narration, it’s often through the thoughts of the protagonist and not anyone else.

I dislike this in most games because it often doesn’t work well, focusing too much on just the dialogue and not giving a deeper understanding of the protagonist, the people around them, or the world. And this is why I don’t like it here in CCCI. I feel like a lot of the issues I have with characters and the story could have been resolved through more words, specifically narration.

As an example, there’s a scene where Shounosuke suddenly becomes distraught and seems to be having a PTSD flashback to an event. Koto worries over him and tells him to hang in there, and eventually he snaps out of it and the scene goes back to normal. I can’t remember the exact script here, but part of it goes like this.

Shounosuke: Hnghhn… Ah…

[Shounosuke’s sprite grabs his head]

Koto: Hey! Are you okay?

[Shounosuke’s sprite recalls a flash of a memory]

Shounosuke: What the hell is this…?!

And then the scene kinda just ends after Koto says two lines of calming him down. It feels really abrupt and the impact it might want to have isn’t there. But if a narrator was added put in, I think it could have elevated the scene. For example, if the narration was through Koto’s eyes:

Shounosuke: Hnghhn… Ah…

I looked up from my papers to see that Mr. Nanase suddenly looked rather pale. Beads of sweat collected and dripped down his neck almost painfully slow.

Before I could ask if he was alright, he suddenly curled into himself while in his seat, looking pained.

[Shounosuke’s sprite grabs his head]

Koto: Hey! Are you okay?

I reached out to Mr. Nanase in an attempt to calm him down, but this seemed to set something off in him rather than offer any kind of comfort.

Like a hurt animal, he began thrashing around, his fingernails digging into his head being squeezed in his hands.

[Shounosuke’s sprite recalls a flash of a memory]

Shounosuke: What the hell is this…?!

With added narration, we not only get a sense that something serious is happening from the wording, but we also know what’s happening in the room— Koto was looking at papers, Koto got up to reach out and offer Shounosuke some help. Without narration, you miss out on describing action occurring in the world, as well as character body language. Your scenes feel like you’re missing something without it.

This is a weird rant to put into this review. But it’s one I believe in. It's also why I can't give Amnesia: Memories a 10/10 because Orion just tells the narration to you, and why NEKOPARA Catboys Paradise makes me want to bludgeon myself.

Overall Thoughts

Guys you gotta play the Last Window it’s better than Hotel Dusk and it’s probably one of the better visual novels on the DS. Here’s why:

1. Kyle is mellowed out and way more likeable this time around.
2. I like the story a lot better now that it doesn’t revolve exactly around Kyle’s ex-boyfriend drama/has Kyle poking people for his ex-boyfriend drama.
3. It’s believable that the entire cast is caught up in the story because this takes place in an apartment complex that characters have lived in for a very long time rather than a random hotel.
4. There’s still fun DS mechanic puzzles, everyone loves those!

Wait this writeup was about Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~Distant Memories~. Okay yeah this game is not very good and I did not like it.

And COULD it have been good? It’s obvious this game did not have much of a budget. If it did, could this game have been saved?

If the story we did get was anything to go by, honestly maybe not. Again, the game felt like it kind of came to conclusions on its own rather than being a mystery the player is actively solving alongside the protagonist like Ashley or Kyle. Even in the moments you did get to make choices, I felt like characters still thought way ahead and thought up new things before you could.

And again, Shounosuke embodies everything about Kyle I didn’t like in Hotel Dusk. I might not be able to handle that for a whole other game.

The music did really slap though...

Final score:

Chase: Cold Case Investigations ~Distant Memories: 3/10. Just because the four songs in the game were pretty good and the Live2D was nice.