Chinatown Detective Agency (Multi)
By: General Interactive
FROM Cycloptic criminologist Columbo to Jessica Fletcher's blood-soaked golden years, who doesn't love a good detective yarn? Set in a noirish 2036, the latest videogame case-cracker is an Oriental whodunit for sofa sleuthers deep-fried in Singapore culture.
It may look like a classic LucasArts-style point-and-click adventure, but Chinatown Detective Agency will nuke your noggin with its real-world investigation hook. What if Street Fighter forced you to hit the gym, or playing Mario required a dab-hand at plumbing? CDA does exactly that, inviting budding gumshoes to use Google and their noodle as they trawl the internet for clues to its brain-scratchers.
Set in a futuristic Singapore – a country that already has CCTV cameras in every cranny and robots patrolling the streets in search of "undesirable social behaviour" – Chinatown Detective Agency stars private investigator Amira Darma as she pays the bills by catching cheating husbands and the like.
Darma soon finds herself taking on jobs for the Criminal Investigation Department, a chain-smoking fixer for the uber-rich, and the mysterious information broker, Tiger Lily, with several routes and choices through a point-and-click yarn that breaks the mould of a decades-old genre.
Rather than poking at pixels, players are presented with evidence, clues or artefacts that they'll need to make sense of. Off to the internet with you – and not some hokey in-game version.
Be it choosing the correct bottle of burgundy for a potential informant, studying poisoning symptoms or searching for quotes from classic literature, the nuts and bolts of Chinatown Detective Agency involves research-heavy legwork, with every solution based on some real-world cipher or trivia.
It's a groundbreaking gimmick, and your first few cases are a journey of genuine discovery, with those eureka moments feeling well-earned – even if it isn't a million miles from Googling a strategy guide.
Aside from browser busywork, Amira occasionally gets dragged into simple shoot-outs, where players must target suspects' legs or arms before the timer runs out: and if your grey matter isn't up to the task, the agency's peppy librarian is always on hand to lend a clue.
But for a game high on its cyberpunk stylings – all neon skyscrapers and futuristic tech – turning to Google is an immersion breaker, yanking players out of its expertly crafted world. Navigating pop-ups promising to add inches, ads for TikTok and fluff about what Holly Willoughby's wearing – any traipse through the internet is beset with reminders you're not in 2036 Singapore.
Still, Chinatown Detective Agency's admirable attempt to freshen up an age-old genre is well worth a look for some futuristic flummoxing – even if it sometimes feels more like doing homework than playing a game.
