• Trauma Team Preview: Forensics Mode

    01/28/2010

    Posted in: Preview, Wii

    Earlier this week Atlus treated me to a look at Trauma Team’s new forensics mode. One of six disciplines featured in the Wii title, Forensics lets the player out of the lab. Playing as Dr. Naomi Kimishima you examine the body, search the crime scene for evidence, interview witnesses and ultimately piece together the clues to reveal how the crime was committed. It’s a lot of fun, particularly for any CSI, Bones or other forensic types.
    Read this on ZTGD.
    Storytelling bears a resemblance to Phoenix Wright, though playing as Naomi gives you a glimpse into the emo side of life. Diagnosed with a terminal illness she’s playing out her final days confronting death and solving crime, what a gal. In possession of a rather neat trick, Naomi has the supernatural ability to hear a victim’s final words once she has solved a crime, which helps provide a tidy conclusion to a case.

    The gameplay seems like a good fit for the Wii. You use the Nunchuck to pan around the screen and uncover clues. The first forensics mission kicks things off in the morgue with you examining a male corpse (no junk featured). As you discover injuries and anomalies – like a cut to the wrist, an oddly shaped mark and a broken finger – they are added as clue cards. You can’t be expected to do all this lab work by your lonesome, and you have “Little Guy” to send items to for analysis. Each clue card has a star ranking, which indicates the strength of the evidence. As you advance through the mission you will try to combine the clues to strengthen the evidence.

    After examining the body it’s time to review witness testimony. By selecting statements from testimony you are able to collect them as clues and use other witness testimony to corroborate. You will discover that much of the testimony is meaningless relative to the clues until you have advanced further in the case. After hearing a witness testify about their visit to the victim’s apartment, examining the victim’s apartment will allow you to pick up clues that make that statement significant to the case.

    Examining crime scenes functions much like checking out the body in the morgue: you use your Nunchuck to pan around the space and then click on things that seem out of place or important – like a giant bloodstain. Adding to the forensics geekery fun: you get to use Luminol! One great thing Atlus was sure to point out that while this is a point-and-click, once you have successfully pointed-and-clicked all the evidence in an area the game will issue a prompt that your work there is done. You will often return to an area, body, or testimony later but this is a very nice way to avoid a click spree and focus on searching out the meaningful tidbits.

    Even with all of the evidence, you will still need to bring your own deductive skills to the table as the case doesn’t solve itself. Use all the tools at your disposal plus a dash of brain power to have your clues add up to “Solid Evidence”. Solid Evidence (which is too much a delight to hear in game than I can convey in text) adds a star to the aforementioned clue cards, and when you have your cards chock full of Solid Evidence stars, you know it’s time to wrap things up.

    If at any point in the investigation you make a mistake (like choosing the wrong option in a multiple choice reasoning sequence) you will lose one of your “hearts”, and losing all your hearts takes you back to the last save. Forensics, like the game’s Diagnostic mode, does not have a difficulty level. There are forty missions across the game, and while this single Forensics mission lasted about an hour it’s to be expected that the Surgery missions will be shorter. Each of the disciplines progress through an intertwined story, though it is possible to play through a single discipline like Forensics straight through (you can always refer to the game menu and its in-game timeline).

    While Atlus emphasized the focus on story and decreased “drama”, there was plenty of dialog and Naomi certainly doesn’t lack for moxie. Forensics Mode is a divergence from the series staples, and given the fun of solving this mission a welcome one. I’m eager to play through the five remaining Forensics missions and really looking forward to trying out the Diagnostics mode – so I can pretend to be House!

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