The Losing Game

「兄は兄。僕は僕ですから」

『内田康夫DSミステリー 名探偵・浅見光彦シリーズ「副都心連続殺人事件」』

"My brother is my brother. And I am myself."

"Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery - The Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko Series: The Fukutoshin Serial Murder Case"

Last year, around this period, I had a short run of reviews of old Nintendo DS detective adventure games... I've only got one for this year though.

I think there's some kind of rule for licensed Nintendo DS games based on the works of famous mystery novelists to have insanely long titles, because after the Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa games, we also got Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko Series: Fukutoshin Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery - The Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko Series: The Fukutoshin Serial Murder Case") in 2009. As the title tells you, the game is based on Uchida Yasuo's long-running Asami Mitsuhiko series: Mitsuhiko is a freelance writer for a travel magazine, who travels all across Japan to touristic destinations, and of course, he often ends up getting himself entangled in murder cases. Not rarely, he ends up being a suspect too, though the local cops usually regret detaining Mitsuhiko whenever they learn he's the younger brother of the current head of Criminal Affairs of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department. While the series is adapted quite often for the small screen, as far as I know, this Nintendo DS game is the first and only time the series got a game adaptation (with an original story). The story starts familiar enough: Mitsuhiko teams up with a new photographer (the player), but he also receives a letter from a girl, whose father recently passed away. This Senkawa Akihiko was one day found dead in his bed by his daughter Mafuyu, but while the police has deemed it a suicide, she can't believe her father would leave her all alone in the world. Senkawa worked in the sales department of the car manufacturer Y, so while working on his article, Asami also visits the Y headquarters along the Fukutoshin Metro Line to see whether there could be a different reason for Senkawa's death. He soon learns three months ago, Nakamori, a co-worker of Senkawa was murdered, which quickly puts a different light on Senkawa's death, and so Mitsuhiko starts digging in Senkawa and Nakamori's past.

I'll just refer to this game as Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery to keep it short. The game is, as you'd expect, an adventure mystery game of the command-style variety, where you use standard commands like "Talk" and "Go to" to visit various locations and talk with various characters to gather information. At key moments you'll be asked questions to show you're on the right track, or you have to solve small puzzles like figuring out a code. Nothing surprising here, though I must admit that right from the start, I was rather pleasantly surprised by the production values of this game. While it's not big AAA-title for the DS, I have to admit I had never expected it to be this good: there are official tie-ups with for example the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line (which had only opened completely one year before the game's release) and Mercedes-Benz, there is a fair amount of animated characters and the voice work! Most characters are voiced, some by very big names like Ootsuka Akio and Tani Ikuko, and a staggering amount of scenes is voiced, not just some key scenes, but also minor scenes. The Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa games looked a lot cheaper than this and to be honest, I have seen enough non-licensed "for gamers" games that aren't produced with as much care as this game. Though, the music is quite... boring.

And as a mystery adventure game too, Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery is very, very boring. It's a shame the story and gameplay isn't as interesting as the production values would suggest. The story does hit all the usual Asami Mitsuhiko tropes, like Mitsuhiko being seen as a suspect by the police until they learn who his brother is, Mitsuhiko being scolded by his mother Shizue for loafing around and not marrying, we visit Karuizawa in a short segment to have our obligatory "tourist destination trip" and where we learn a bit about a local tourist spot and of course, the mystery plot focuses more on entangling human relationships and their motives, rather than solving tricks, so if you're an Asami Mitsuhiko fan, you might be satisfied with that alone (and yes, I do realize this game is of course also marketed to exactly those people, and not mystery gamers per se). I do have to say I am kinda disappointed the game is so Tokyo-centred. I get they got the Fukutoshin Line deal, but the way every location happens to be near around one of the Fukutoshin stations and one plot point was tied directly to the line felt a bit forced. But when translated to an actual interactive game, this story just doesn't really work in a way to be interesting. All you do is just go from one location to another and go through the conversations in order. The segments where you need to answer some questions correctly to show you've "deduced" something to proceed are just questions asking you repeat the little fact you learned five minutes ago, and the few puzzle segments where you solve a code aren't fun either. The game has multiple endings (bad endings), but as far as I know, they are all just directly choice-dependent, like choose to go to location A first means instant bad ending, location B first and you're fine. Which isn't really interesting either. 

The story itself I have to admit, was surprisingly on-par with other Asami Mitsuhiko books I have read. The game scenario is credited to the Asami Mitsuhiko Club by the way, the official fan club run by author Uchida Yasuo himself (it was disbanded in 2015 after 22 years). The books are not really the kind of puzzlers I prefer to read, but at least fans of the series will probably like this as it doesn't stray from the formula and feels like a genuine Mitsuhiko tale. At its core, the story does have things I do like, regarding how the whole series of murder is set up, though motive-wise, things feel a bit weak, and that way they tried to make the murderer feel symphathetic (because it's a human drama-focused mystery) didn't work at all for me. Not sure if the writers actually were trying to portray them as sympathetic, or were just overdoing the "explanation of the motive", but it was a really weird climax... Some parts felt a bit forced though, like the trip to Karuizawa, but at least we got to visit... Uchida Yasuo there.

Which was odd. In this game, Asami Mitsuhiko is actually well-known as the amateur detective, because the in-universe Uchida has written the books based on his adventures and those have been adapted for television too (like in the real world). He's at least famous enough for people to recognize him occassionally, and for Mafuyu to write him a letter in the first place. And yet there'd still be police detectives in Tokyo who don't know him? Or somehow Mitsuhiko's editor doesn't keep a better eye on him, considering Mitsuhiko's tendency to skip work to work on a case? The choice for the player being Mitsuhiko's photographer was also a bit weird. At the end of the game, you're actually being ranked for how good of an assistant you were to Mitsuhiko, but the rating system is a bit vague for that. You're ranked based on answering the questions correctly or doing the right suggestions to Mitsuhiko, but... "Mitsuhiko's assistant" isn't a character in the books, so you can't really know "how" you're supposed to act. I'm not sure why they didn't have you be Mitsuhiko himself...

But in short, the only thing Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko Series: Fukutoshin Renzoku Satsujin Jiken has going for it as basically its production values. As a mystery game, the story feels like an Asami Mitsuhiko tale, but it's not fun at all to play as a game, with too much hand-holding and not really requiring the player to ever think for themselves about the case and mysteries. Now I am starting to wonder whether there are actually games based on existing mystery novel series that are interesting on their merits as video games?  Perhaps I should try YAKATA Nightmare Project, based on Ayatsuji's House series one day...

Original Japanese title(s): 『内田康夫DSミステリー 名探偵・浅見光彦シリーズ「副都心連続殺人事件」』