The latest game from the creative genius Shu Takumi of the Ace Attorney series is called Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, a mystery title which is something that he has been wanting to create for a very long time now, but what took so much time was crafting just the right style of animation fitting to the story – which is fittingly put, gorgeous. Ghost Trick has the quirky antics and wild humor that Ace Attorney fans are familiar with and love. The story of Ghost Trick takes place over a span of 24 hours in which you must solve the mystery of why you, Sissel, were killed while you possess various objects like giant wrecking balls or… doughnuts in the process of solving the massive mystery.

In the demo I played, I took the role of Sissel who immediately dies when the story opens up. He finds out that his soul now has the power to jump out of his body into neighboring inanimate objects (only lifeless objects, no living or dead creatures). He must use this power to protect others while on the road to solving the mystery of why he was killed.

Each item you possess has a “trick” that you can perform, which will be indicated via the top screen on the DS. On the bottom left corner of the screen will be a Ghost button, which takes you into a visual mode, while also pausing the flow of time, that allows you to see what items are close enough to possess. On the top of the screen, it will tell you what you can do once you possess that object. For example, you can possess a bicycle which opens up the ability to use the bell to ring and distract the assassin you’re trying to stop from shooting and killing an innocent young lady. This assassin is designed to be almost the perfect assassin, if only he wasn’t the Near-Sighted Assassin, so near-sighted that he can hardly see past the tip of his gun.

Once you’ve moved your soul into the object you want to possess, you’ll press the Ghost button again to resume the flow of time and activate the Trick button, which is on the bottom right of the touch screen, to put your plan into play and start up some sweet cause and effect action. There will be certain points where you have the ability to turn back time four minutes and manipulate what you just saw unfold to retry fate and come up with a new outcome. The clock will count down in four real-time minutes where you’ll see everything happen before you once again.

If you are unsure what you’re supposed to do correctly, sometimes there will be a “…” thought bubble that you can tap on to get a hint as to what you should possess and what trick to use next.

The game is just full of hilarity and even makes fun of itself by the characters making jokes about it being a demo, after all. Everything they say is so humorous and even the tricks you perform to affect the outcomes of how things unfold are extremely entertaining. I definitely think this is going to end up being a huge hit, but it might end up stuck with a cult audience like the Phoenix Wright games (albeit a huge cult audience). I’m so glad Capcom is always willing to bring us games like Ghost Trick to feed our craving for obscure and need for crazy entertainment.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is set to release in late 2010 for the Nintendo DS, and if my explanation of how the gameplay unfolds was any bit confusing, it’s definitely something best experienced through imagery so please check out the gameplay video below and the newest screenshots of part of the levels I played during E3 this year! And please, feel free to revel in the Ace Attorney cameos like I did if you catch them.

Tags: Capcom, e3 2010, Ghost Trick, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Phoenix Wright, Shu Takumi

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 5:03 pm and is filed under DS, E3, Events, Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.