Detective Pikachu

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Detective Pikachu is a Graphic Adventure released on Nintendo 3DS in 2018, with its story later loosely adapted into a 2019 live-action film by the same name. This game’s story set in the Pokemon universe is about a young man named Tim who is searching for his missing father, and who happens to come across the titular Detective Pikachu, one of the Pokemon mascot critters wearing a deerskin cap and wielding a magnifying glass. Curiously, Tim can understand Detective Pikachu’s words, while everyone else just hears his usual “Pika Pikachu” speak. Together, the two work together both to track down Tim’s missing dad and to find the reason behind a series of Pokemon attacks plaguing the city.

The presentation in Detective Pikachu is quite good, and very polished. The game features cartoony 3D visuals with very good animation and detailed environments, which blends in pretty well with pre-rendered cutscenes sprinkled throughout the game.

However, the real star here has to be the sound. Detective Pikachu’s music is cinematic in quality, staying subdued until events stir it into action – it’s pretty clear why this game was chosen to adapt into a film, it’s created in a way where it feels as if it’s already halfway there. More interesting is the game’s voice acting, which doesn’t extend to all the spoken dialogue, but it does cover much of it, including the Pokemon themselves. Yes, unlike most mainline Pokemon games, Detective Pikachu takes a page from the anime series and has all the Pokemon voiced (usually repeating their name). Detective Pikachu himself speaks normal English with a gruff adult male voice that sets him apart from every other depiction of the character (including the film adaptation, whose lines were spoken by the smooth-voiced Ryan Reynolds). All of this attention to the sound design really sets this game apart within the Pokemon universe, and makes it something special in that regard.

As for the gameplay, this is pretty typical Graphic Adventure fare. Talk with people and interact with the environment to discover clues, then use those to find more clues, and so on. There’s thankfully little in the way of “Sierra Logic”, though at times it can seem uncertain where you’re meant to go next. On occasion, as you progress the story, you’ll have timed button prompts to press, but mostly this game focuses on the detective-ing.

Overall, Detective Pikachu doesn’t do much to advance the Graphic Adventure genre. However, it is a solid entry in that genre that carves a unique niche in the Pokemon franchise, with plenty of charm that makes for a fun and refreshing look at the world of Pokemon. If you’re a fan of the Pokemon universe looking for something out of the series norm, this is a game worth trying out.

tl;dr – Detective Pikachu is a Graphic Adventure that has you taking the role of a young man trying to solve mysteries in the Pokemon universe with the help of a Pikachu that only he can understand. This game doesn’t do anything truly original for the Graphic Adventure genre, but it’s a unique look into the Pokemon universe with a lot of charm, making this game well worth getting for fans of the franchise as a whole.

Grade: B

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