Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle
released on Dec 17, 2009
Blue Toad Murder File: The Mysteries of Little Riddle is a one to four player co-operative episodic download game published by Relentless Software. Set in the sleepy village of Little Riddle, the main aim of the game is to follow clues to find the murderer.
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:shrug:
The PS3/360/Wii generation brought online stores to home consoles, but especially with the low storage in initial console models -- I have no clue how anyone got by with a 20Gb PS3 or an Arcade 360 -- it took a while until they caught on and became what they are today. For a while, there was so little stuff in there that you didn't have to be spectacular to hold the spotlight to yourself, and that made it a great time to capitalize on your small game.
Of course, there was a bit of confusion amongst developers on how to price games. $10 and $15 were kind of the norm, with price points like $25 and $30, which are common nowadays, being rare. Quality also wildly varied, with some cheap games priced high and the opposite situation as well. One particular game went all-in with its sales strategy: Blue Toad Murder Files.
It was one of the first, maybe the first episodic downloadable title released on the PS3. By all-in strategy, I mean it was outrageously expensive. I’m pretty sure each episode used to go for $15 when they released, with the first one costing even more. That’s at least 90 dollars for the whole series. Mind you, each episode is about an hour long, and the production value is incredibly low.
The game has you playing as a british detective from the Blue Toad Agency. After a triumphantly solved case, you decide to spend some time off in the countryside, at the village of Little Riddle. However, your vacation is soon interrupted by the murder of the town’s mayor. Without hesitating, you set out to investigate the crime, unearthing dark secrets of the tiny village on the way.
There are six episodes, and on each one, you investigate a new crime that occurs, solving puzzles on the way and using your powers of observation to, when the time comes, point your finger at the culprit. Sounds awesome, right? Puzzles? British village? The first game that comes to mind is Professor Layton, and that’s really fun. Unfortunately, that comparison does not actually hold in practice, for a myriad of reasons, beginning with the extremely low production values.
Despite being a PS3 game, the 3D models and animations in the game are of very low quality. There's glitchy facial animations, absent animations, animations that don't match what the narrator describes... Plus there's some garish 2D backgrounds that get used every once in a while instead of the game's usual 3D scenery. I can understand keeping a limited scope due to working on a tight budget, but it's a $90 game. This kind of art quality doesn't make sense.
And then there is the voice acting.
The story is led by a narrator, who does the majority of the talking, but characters are voice acted as well. By one guy. There is one man listed as a VA on the credits, and going through the game, it shouldn't be long before you realize that he's dubbing everyone. The worst part is that all the women’s voices are just that same guy speaking in falsetto. It is not only tasteless, but extremely grating. There are a lot of characters in this game, and this is sure to make you wanna punch the TV.
I respect the hustle, at least, he did put in some effort creating different speech patterns to try and make them different, but gosh, at least hire a woman for the female characters. Looking at all this, it's no wonder, after the game was complete, that the price fell so much over time. I paid $5 for everything on a sale, but even then, I question if it was that good an idea, as the gameplay isn’t very smart either.
There are twelve puzzles per episode. A handful of locations in town can be selected during each part of the plot, and when you visit one, you’re presented with a cutscene and a puzzle. After a while, you have to do a case review, which is a four question, multiple choice test about facts that were presented thus far. This happens three times per episode. Finally, at the end of the story, you have to pinpoint a culprit from a list of four people.
The puzzles are alright. A few of them are pretty good, others, okayish, and then there are the dumb word plays or listening challenges that just, ugh. The thing is, unlike the Layton series, in Blue Toad, the puzzles don’t ramp up in difficulty. Rather, they stay more or less on the same level, which I consider to range from easy to mechanically-intensive-but-otherwise-easy. To conceal this weakness, the designers added a timer to each puzzle so you have to solve it fast. It’s distracting and unbalanced: some puzzles have too much time, others, too little.
Then there’s the questionnaires, where you're asked details about the cutscenes. Some times it’s relevant stuff, like character names, locations, etcetera. Other times, it’s the color or look of a person or object, information that ultimately shows itself irrelevant. Which leads me to the part that really kills me: Finding the culprit.
If you’ve played Ace Attorney, then you’re used to huge trails of logic and deduction, going through all the evidence and testimony to link the killer to the time, place, means and reason for the murder. It takes a while, there are some leaps of faith along the way, but the full picture you get at the end is airtight. You know who, how, when and why.
In Blue Toad… Well, it’s far from that. The time you spend around town, solving puzzles… 99% of that time is wasted. In every episode, the killer is exposed by a single moment. One line. One item in the background. The way a dog barked when it saw them. Pure conjecture. One after the other, the cases’ conclusions outstupid themselves, making you ask "what is the point of this?".
The core of a detective story is the trail leading up to the culprit. The investigation, the clues, the hypotheses, all of these make the genre what it is. If we’re just going to stall for an hour and then wing it when the time comes, there might as well not be a crime, nor a detective. In fact, the end of the game never explains why the first murder happened in the first place, a cardinal sin in the world of murder mysteries.
The funny thing is, I played this game twice due to my atrocious memory, and the second time, I wrote a review to prevent myself from going through it all over again. And if you're still reading, I extend that recommendation to you. Just don’t. There are far better games that do what it does.
Of course, there was a bit of confusion amongst developers on how to price games. $10 and $15 were kind of the norm, with price points like $25 and $30, which are common nowadays, being rare. Quality also wildly varied, with some cheap games priced high and the opposite situation as well. One particular game went all-in with its sales strategy: Blue Toad Murder Files.
It was one of the first, maybe the first episodic downloadable title released on the PS3. By all-in strategy, I mean it was outrageously expensive. I’m pretty sure each episode used to go for $15 when they released, with the first one costing even more. That’s at least 90 dollars for the whole series. Mind you, each episode is about an hour long, and the production value is incredibly low.
The game has you playing as a british detective from the Blue Toad Agency. After a triumphantly solved case, you decide to spend some time off in the countryside, at the village of Little Riddle. However, your vacation is soon interrupted by the murder of the town’s mayor. Without hesitating, you set out to investigate the crime, unearthing dark secrets of the tiny village on the way.
There are six episodes, and on each one, you investigate a new crime that occurs, solving puzzles on the way and using your powers of observation to, when the time comes, point your finger at the culprit. Sounds awesome, right? Puzzles? British village? The first game that comes to mind is Professor Layton, and that’s really fun. Unfortunately, that comparison does not actually hold in practice, for a myriad of reasons, beginning with the extremely low production values.
Despite being a PS3 game, the 3D models and animations in the game are of very low quality. There's glitchy facial animations, absent animations, animations that don't match what the narrator describes... Plus there's some garish 2D backgrounds that get used every once in a while instead of the game's usual 3D scenery. I can understand keeping a limited scope due to working on a tight budget, but it's a $90 game. This kind of art quality doesn't make sense.
And then there is the voice acting.
The story is led by a narrator, who does the majority of the talking, but characters are voice acted as well. By one guy. There is one man listed as a VA on the credits, and going through the game, it shouldn't be long before you realize that he's dubbing everyone. The worst part is that all the women’s voices are just that same guy speaking in falsetto. It is not only tasteless, but extremely grating. There are a lot of characters in this game, and this is sure to make you wanna punch the TV.
I respect the hustle, at least, he did put in some effort creating different speech patterns to try and make them different, but gosh, at least hire a woman for the female characters. Looking at all this, it's no wonder, after the game was complete, that the price fell so much over time. I paid $5 for everything on a sale, but even then, I question if it was that good an idea, as the gameplay isn’t very smart either.
There are twelve puzzles per episode. A handful of locations in town can be selected during each part of the plot, and when you visit one, you’re presented with a cutscene and a puzzle. After a while, you have to do a case review, which is a four question, multiple choice test about facts that were presented thus far. This happens three times per episode. Finally, at the end of the story, you have to pinpoint a culprit from a list of four people.
The puzzles are alright. A few of them are pretty good, others, okayish, and then there are the dumb word plays or listening challenges that just, ugh. The thing is, unlike the Layton series, in Blue Toad, the puzzles don’t ramp up in difficulty. Rather, they stay more or less on the same level, which I consider to range from easy to mechanically-intensive-but-otherwise-easy. To conceal this weakness, the designers added a timer to each puzzle so you have to solve it fast. It’s distracting and unbalanced: some puzzles have too much time, others, too little.
Then there’s the questionnaires, where you're asked details about the cutscenes. Some times it’s relevant stuff, like character names, locations, etcetera. Other times, it’s the color or look of a person or object, information that ultimately shows itself irrelevant. Which leads me to the part that really kills me: Finding the culprit.
If you’ve played Ace Attorney, then you’re used to huge trails of logic and deduction, going through all the evidence and testimony to link the killer to the time, place, means and reason for the murder. It takes a while, there are some leaps of faith along the way, but the full picture you get at the end is airtight. You know who, how, when and why.
In Blue Toad… Well, it’s far from that. The time you spend around town, solving puzzles… 99% of that time is wasted. In every episode, the killer is exposed by a single moment. One line. One item in the background. The way a dog barked when it saw them. Pure conjecture. One after the other, the cases’ conclusions outstupid themselves, making you ask "what is the point of this?".
The core of a detective story is the trail leading up to the culprit. The investigation, the clues, the hypotheses, all of these make the genre what it is. If we’re just going to stall for an hour and then wing it when the time comes, there might as well not be a crime, nor a detective. In fact, the end of the game never explains why the first murder happened in the first place, a cardinal sin in the world of murder mysteries.
The funny thing is, I played this game twice due to my atrocious memory, and the second time, I wrote a review to prevent myself from going through it all over again. And if you're still reading, I extend that recommendation to you. Just don’t. There are far better games that do what it does.