Hollywood, 1960s. A series of murders have been committed by a man known only as the puzzle killer. The bodies of his prey have been found in increasingly bizarre circumstances, and each time, there's a puzzle left behind, the answer to which provides a clue to the whereabouts of the next victim. Who is he picking on? Former winners of the popular TV show, "The Incredible Puzzle Masters" - on which you're a contestant.
James Noir's Hollywood Crimes is a slightly more serious take on a Professor Layton style puzzler, only with a slightly narrower focus. Rather than being able to freely explore a city looking for clues, instead, you're guided from one puzzle to the next by way of a series of cutscenes, where real life actors explain the story, from the backstage producer, who hurries you on stage, to the presenter Glen Darby, a cheesy, yet friendly enough take on a quiz show host. It's an odd effect, similar to point and click games of days gone by, but it's a bit of a cool one.
The game alternates between asking you to take part in the TV series, and helping to solve the crimes by lending a detective from the FBI a hand in his investigations. When you're on stage doing the TV show, you'll be presented with a grid from which to choose a puzzle, with the top row being easy puzzles, and worth a small number of points, while the higher value, and higher difficulty ones are found at the bottom. It's up to you to complete as many puzzles as you can in order to beat your opponent's high score. Luckily for you, they have their turn first, so you'll have a set target in mind when you're choosing your challenge. Strangely, you don't have a limited number of puzzles in which to try and beat their score, so if you really want to, you can just build up from the easy puzzles and keep going until you've managed to beat their score. Stranger still is that the game tells you what puzzle each tile represents before you've chose it, so there's no surprise here, and no real gameshow-like challenge. It's a bit disappointing really.
There are plenty of pattern-following mazes waiting to be conquered.
When you first start playing, though, you likely won't be paying too much attention to the intricacies of the gameshow, as it's the puzzles where most of the game's appeal lies. From simple observation games, asking you to spot where a cross made out of coloured tiles lies on a grid of similarly coloured tiles, to mazes that ask you to repeat a certain pattern (such as only being able to follow the order circle - star - square), complimented by more standard puzzles, like dominoes, there's a variety of unusual, and original games on offer here to get your grey matter working. One of the more interesting ones asks you to fill a number of shapes with one of three colours, whilst making sure none of the three colours touch - and there's even a few cool puzzles that use the 3DS's gyroscopes and accelerometer to let you slide a shape through a maze and into a hole by tilting the console itself.
After putting your opponent to shame each and every week, you'll be called out by the FBI officer to have a look at the latest crime scene, and help pinpoint any clues that have been left behind. Again, you don't actually get to examine the crime scene for clues - instead, all you have to do is solve the puzzles you get given. Offering a nice break from the TV puzzles, the crime scene ones feel a lot more original, and are arguably that little bit harder too - after all, this is a criminal you're meant to be hunting down.
Like most good puzzle games, though, when it comes to completing the puzzles, you're not on your own. Touch the arrow at the side of the screen, and you'll open a menu that gives you a few extra options, including the ability to doodle notes on a layover, or ask for a hint. Each puzzle has three hints available, but, as with games like Professor Layton, you have a limited number of total hints you can ask for. The more puzzles you complete, the more hint tokens you earn - but as you only earn one per puzzle, you'll be out there on your own for at least a few if you use all the hints you can get. Unfortunately, though, when you need them the most, the hints aren't actually all that much help. On one of the few occasions we called on them, the hints explained the most obvious part of the puzzle (that we'd already figured out), and then talked us through how to get to the point at which we already were - which obviously wasn't help. What a waste of three tokens!
These are some of the trickier puzzles in the game - turning each dial independently, you need to make each of the hands point at the same combination of letters. We solved it through trial and error more than cautious planning.
Sadly, like many TV shows, it feels a bit like the developers ran out of money half way through the series, as, although the game box proudly boasts of "over 140 mind games and puzzles", what you'll actually be playing are variations upon a theme. By the time you get to week six of the TV series, and find yourself playing "wriggle puzzle 6", where you have to shuffle some snakes, "shikaku 5", which is asks you to draw boxes of sizes dictated by numbers to cover a grid (and is actually good fun), and "logi 5", which will make you want to tear your own eyes out, you'll start to cry out for some original puzzles. It's not too much of a problem that it's mostly variations on a theme - after all, a good puzzle is a good puzzle, and it's not like we're playing exactly the same one from week to week, but still - we'd rather they were a bit more honest on the box. Even the story ends up coming to a rather abrupt, and odd ending, feeling like it's reached its peak well before it should.
With an interesting film noir theme, a strange storyline that comes to a rather bizarre ending, and a lot of repeated puzzles, it's safe to say James Noir's Hollywood Crimes isn't a clear replacement for everyone's puzzling Professor - but, if you're looking for a puzzle game to tide you over on the 3DS, there's a fair few brain teasers in here to keep you going. If you can find it for a decent price, it's well worth picking up.
Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS
