Trace Memory
Alright, so in my plight for DS games my dearest beau, Ryan, fished out some games that he remembered liking. One of which was Trace Memory. I thought, alright, sure I’ll give it a try. And surprisingly enough, it was pretty enjoyable, while it lasted at least. It’s kind of like a mystery adventure game, having to pick up clues to figure out what to do next, solve puzzles and almost leaves you feeling like Indiana Jones (though nowhere near as exciting has his quests)
Trace Memory was released by Ching in 2005 and is about a young girl, Ashley Mizuki Robbins who is on a quest to find her father. So, it’s not really an epic quest of monumental proportions, but she has been told that her parents died when she was three only to discover else wise. She receives a package with a letter from her father summoning her to the rather ominously named Blood Edward Island, in the package is an electronic device (here’s where you can tell when the game was released, the device looks like the original Nintendo DS) called the Dual Trace System (DTS) and is attuned through biomechanics to Ashley and only Ashley. At first you don’t know what the device is or what it does, but it all comes together through the game.
So, Ashley goes to the island, and you wander around for a bit and meet up with a ghost guy who calls himself D; he has no memories of his life and therefore cannot move on, so of course you’re roped into helping this ghost find his past.
I’ll stop there with the plot, so I don’t ruin anything if anyone wants to play this.
I think the games does a good job of putting the DS capabilities to use. You move Ashley around 3D environments with the D pad or the stylus. I found using the stylus was a lot easier since some of the pathways are twisty-turvy and the D Pad only lets you move in the four cardinal directions. The graphics of the actual game are a little shoddy, looking something like early PS1 games with boxy type environments, but for what it’s worth there are static images of your surroundings on the top screen. Some of the pictures were rather pretty. The cut scenes made me feel like I was reading a manga. The art is in an anime-ish style and is done rather well. So, I’d give graphics a 6.
The game play was easy to grasp, any time you walked up to an area you could investigate a little icon would appear in the corner of your screen. It’s really kind of point and click, simple but done really well. You have to investigate just about everything to get all the clues you need. However, sometimes that lil ghost guy would be like “I think we need to look around more” if you went to leave a room before you found everything. In that aspect, I feel like some of the elements were way too obvious where others would leave me staring and wondering what I was supposed to do next.
The mini puzzle games really put the DS to use, having to use the stylus to move things, your finger to rub the touch screen to clear off a surface of something, the use of the microphone and you even have to close your console and reopen it for one of them. Game play I’d give a 9, for ingenuity. But for as often as D interrupts what you’re doing game play as a whole would be more around an 8ish.
(Did I mention how I hate numerical rating scales? I feel like it limits way too much of a rate, which is probably why this thing is so gosh darn long )
Moving on, the main issue I had with Trace Memory is it is ridiculously short. I think my game time was around 3 and a half hours. So it was easy to fly through and left me wanting more. I almost thought it was a demo for how fast I went through it. And like I said earlier, some clues would reach out and smack you in the face while others would leave you stumped for a bit with D endlessly nagging “I think we should look around here more”. Game play was simple and I found it somewhat disheartening that the depth in some of the puzzles weren’t used more often.
There isn’t much of a second life for Trace Memory, as replay doesn’t change much, you can maybe find a few little Easter eggs, but nothing much, and you can beat it in half the time…yeah.
Trace Memory was interesting, with a few really inspiring puzzles that just seem to be over way too fast. But if you like adventure games and want a short one, give it a go. You might like it.
