Looksley’s Lineup

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Looksley’s Lineup is a Puzzle game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2010 and then grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when that system was released. This game has players holding the Nintendo DSi or Nintendo 3DS in “book mode”, sideways, with the game’s camera tracking head movement to theoretically allow players to move their head to look around a room in 3D. Using this, players make use of the perspective to find shapes and words cleverly hidden within the rooms to solve puzzles within the game.

Of course I say “theoretically” because this creative use of the technology sadly doesn’t always seem to work. When it does work it’s extremely cool, and makes for a really unique experience. But most of the time, trying to control the game this way just makes things really frustrating.

Making things even worse is that selecting the things you’re looking for requires moving a cursor with the D-pad and then tapping a button with the touchscreen, a combination which all but guarantees that you’ll mess up your viewing angle, which often needs to be precise to line up the image in question.

At the very least this game’s presentation is adorable, with colorful 3D visuals that look almost like a pop-up book, backed by a delightful, relaxed soundtrack. The only thing that ruins this presentation is Looksley himself constantly harassing you to consult the hint menu as you’re searching for the hidden items. Yes, I know there’s a hint menu you dumb anthropomorphic rabbit, now just shut up and let me play the game.

Looksley’s Lineup is a game that had so much potential, but I just don’t think the head-tracking technology was quite good enough to support this concept when the game was made, and the problems this causes are exacerbated by some poor design choices. I still think there are some really fun and unique experiences to be had with this game, but you have to suffer some torturously frustrating experiences to get to them.

tl;dr – Looksley’s Lineup is a Puzzle game where players use head tracking via the camera to search rooms for hidden letters and objects. It’s great when it works, but it often doesn’t work, and the issues this game has make it frustrating far more often than it is fun.

Grade: C-

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