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Another Code: Two Memories Review - DS

Introduction

On a quick side note, the developers of Another Code: Two Memories are doing the point and click thing again on the DS - but this time with the system held sideways in Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Hopefully, they'll learn from their mistakes, since Another Code: Two Memories leaves a lot to be desired.

Gameplay

Here's the story: Girl called Ashley Robbins thinks her father is dead, and has been for ten years. Girl's father turns out not to be dead, as does mother. Girl travels to mysterious island with only her aunt. Aunt disappears roughly twelve seconds into game. Ashley is told by rough sailor chap to go and explore aforementioned dark and mysterious island by herself. Ashley vandalises gravestones and discovers ghost called D. Ashley and D work together and unlock mysteries about father, mother, 'Another Code' project, with much hilarity and fun. Well, not much of the last two.

You move Ashley around with the touch screen, which shows a top down view of the world. The upper screen shows stationary shots of the environment that she's in. There's not much point for it being there. You'll be asked to put your thumbprint on the touchscreen so that the in-game 'DTS' system Ashley carries (who cares what it stands for, it just a DS) can be locked to Ashley only. It's a pity they didn't tell you that when they said to put your finger in the middle of the box, it was calibrating the screen. So my fat thumb went down roughly nearish to where the box was, which screwed up all the touch sensitivity for the rest of the session. Nice.

The key problem with Another Code is that it's dumb. Just...dumb. I mean, if you can overlook Ashley venturing off into a deserted mansion on the cheerfully named 'Blood Island', placing steel balls on levers to open doors, finding keys in paintings and taking pictures of things, you get hit by stupid localisation issues. I mean, some pieces of text really needed to be more western. I mean, the whole 'Another Code' project just doesn't sound grammatically correct when you read it in game, during one of the many, laboriously overblown text sequences. There are other instances when you think 'what?' after reading a passage, but it's gone, and you don't really care about what it said anyway.

The game is full of puzzles to complete, but because the game is dumb, they're harder than they should be. The first puzzle was twisting a wheel to open a bridge. Except that now my DS though I was pressing above and left of where I was really pointing, thanks to the aforementioned calibration issues. I inched the wheel around, and then realised it had to be spun twice. Hooray. Five minutes of my life wasted. You'll also have to piece together pieces of a broken sign, overlay images you've already taken with the DTS and compare (continued next page)