Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk is pleasingly procedural ⊟
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks slowly winding my way through the labyrinthine plot of Jake Hunter Detective Story: Ghost of the Dusk. I’ve been taking my time with it, picking it up in fits and starts – not because it’s failed to hold my interest, but simply because I’ve been busy with other things.
Besides, I find that a mystery adventure game, like a mystery novel, is best enjoyed when the mood strikes, and when I have a decent amount of time to sit down with it and make progress. Like, say, a round-trip flight.
The main mystery of Ghost of the Dusk seems straightforward at first, but expands in ways I probably shouldn’t tell you about. Here’s the synopsis from Nintendo.com:
A shaky lead about a stiff in a haunted house puts Jake Hunter on a perilous path of clues and dark secrets. When the owner of the home comes clean that the place is cursed and the body count starts rising, Jake realizes he’s facing a threat unlike any other.
Solving the mystery means a lot of talking – to Jake Hunter’s police detective pal Kingsley, his linguist assistant Yulia, witnesses, and suspects. It also means pixel-hunt investigations in crime scenes. It means going back and forth from location to location to apply new clues to old scenes.
What it doesn’t mean is brilliant flashes of insight. Jake Hunter is pointedly Not a Genius – deducing why a man with an exam table in his living room is called “Doc” by the local homeless is a multi-stage process for Jake. Instead of solving impossible puzzles and making leaps of logic, Jake solves cases by carefully investigating and talking to everyone – a lot more like a real police detective than a fictional one, I’d guess. Each clue builds additional understanding of the circumstances, which then leads to another angle of investigation. The case itself is unusually high-profile, but Jake still solves it with solid, down-to-earth detective work. So, in fact, does Yulia, who proves to be just as meticulous an investigator, and universally acknowledged and respected for her skill.
I enjoy the contrast from, say, Phoenix Wright, who doesn’t even realize he’s solving a case until he randomly presents evidence.
Jake Hunter is more grounded than that, his world a little more like ours – even if, like Ace Attorney, it’s unclear whether he lives in America, Japan or some combination of the two. It’s less jokey, less flashy, but still removed enough from reality that I don’t feel like a creep for being entertained by a murder case.
And Jake Hunter’s playstyle of methodically speaking to everyone, searching every location, and thinking through every question of an interrogation – really, thinking about what you’re going to ask is a mechanic in this game – is really comforting.
I’m still not used to Jake’s hair, though. And I’m not sure why there’s cherub bum on the bottom screen pretty much at all times.
