Another Code: Recollection is two games that were initially released on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, repackaged as one. The game is a nostalgic return to the early 2000s for some, but for myself and others, an entirely fresh experience. The story centers around Ashley, a teenager who receives a message that kicks off her journey into investigating her parents' deaths in the first game. This launches her tale of intrigue, where she sleuths a long-obscured truth, solving puzzles and traveling far in the process.
Any long-time, avid puzzle game enjoyer would be thrilled thrilled to have the chance to play this game. It was a well-loved series of puzzle games in the early 2000s, that fans say did not get the attention it deserved. The first game is a remake of a point-and-click made for the Nintendo DS, and the second game is a remake of a Nintendo Wii game. Since these two consoles are different from the Nintendo Switch, one could expect some growing pains with an adapted UI, but the problems with Another Code: Recollection go a bit deeper than that. Keep that in mind for later. For now, let’s start with the obvious stuff.
It’s readily apparent upon opening the game that the visuals are beautiful. Simple, yes, but the graphics are eye-catching between the smooth 3D animation and striking, vibrant colors in every game frame. Some textures leave a little to be desired, but overall,Another Code: Recollection’smodernizing overhaul was well done. The character models in particular standout, especially that of Ashley, the main character. Additionally, the HUD is simple and minimalistic, barely noticeable during gameplay. When you open up the codex, through the use of Ashley’s device (which isdefinitely absolutely notthe Nintendo Switch), the DAS, the interface is clean and easy to read.
The game utilizes cell shading, giving it an overarching anime feel. The cell shading is elegant, and combined with the bright colors, does a lot of work to make the game look more polished. A picky gamer who looks too closely at their environment, however, will realize that the textures used leave much to be desired. This is particularly true in environments at the beginning of the game before you get into the puzzles and intrigue.
Another Code: Recollectionjust about makes up for it with its music, though. There were moments when the melancholic background piano provided an emotional backdrop for the scene, and there were moments punctuated by unease when there wasn’t any music at all. The music punctuates the story, providing an emotional queue to continue on your path. The sound design is decent, even for ambient noises of the environment, which a lot of games don’t pay as much attention to.
However, the audio balancing in the settings needs to be adjusted before playing. The voice acting is far louder than the rest of the sounds – obnoxiously so. Sometimes it sounds like the voice actors are speaking into your ear. Given that the actors attempted to do an anime-like voice acting style (meaning they sighed, groaned and breathed into the microphone a lot), it can be disturbing, mainly if you aren’t used to that type of voice acting. This issue with the voices were distracting during cutscenes, especially the first cutscene of the game.
Speaking of story, the writing leaves a lot to be desired. Take this with a little grain of salt, as some of the following criticisms are definitely subjective.
About six hours into the run, you could count on one hand how many cutscenes there were that did not incorporate a flashback or a time skip. The flashbacks sometimes happened multiple timesin a single scene. They were done in such a way that the time it took between the present frame and the past frame was enough to remove the player from the story, breaking the immersion and becoming overwhelmingly frustrating in their repetitiveness. Some such scenes took a 10- to 15-second frame swap to show us a single image for two seconds before we returned to the present time. It was a lot of effort for a PNG to provide no additional value or context that had not already been stated or shown.
This leads me to wonder why the development team felt it necessary to make callbacks this way. If you are playing the game straight through, some of the flashbacks were to events immediately before the scene we were in. On the surface, it reads like the development team had no trust in the story and its environment to be able to tell itself, which is a big problem for a puzzle game.
The game tells you how to solve the puzzles before you even ask for help before you can even see what the puzzle is sometimes. Even with the puzzle hint feature fully turned off, the game would not stop spoiling the puzzles’ solutions. Ultimately, this writing choice leads to the death of the primary gameplay mechanic – solving puzzles – and leaves you with nothing to do besides hold the joystick down for the walking simulator portions of the game. Which, outside of cutscenes and puzzles, is every other part.
This game suffers from many pacing issues, from a storytelling perspective and a script perspective. As for storytelling, the player is made to go through long bouts of just walking around from one room to the next, making the game feel unengaging. Secondly, the dialogue script is excruciatingly repetitive and wastes a lot of time describing things that happened on the screen. The beginning of the game was a slog to get through, to give you an example.
That being said, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Around the second half, it picks up a bit as another mystery gets introduced, and we realize that Ashley is in real danger. Closer to the end of both games, the story starts to pick up and become more engaging. Better late than never.
Now, let’s talk about the mechanics and the controls. As mentioned before, the puzzles are spoiled for you. If you mute the game and decide you’re not going to read the dialogue anymore (you won’t miss anything till you get to cutscenes anyway), however, the puzzles are well done. Most of the puzzles are enoyable, although they could be more complex. Your biggest challenge with solving these puzzles is whether the controls will cooperate with you.
It was mentioned before that this game is a duology originally made for the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii. Well, its Nintendo Switch remake has many problems regarding the smoothness of the controls. It was not developed well for the Switch, and the controls’ unresponsiveness sometimes severely impacts the enjoyability.
To name one such control, a few times you have to pick up an object and use real-life motion controls to manipulate it. In one specific instance, you are trying to jiggle an object loose and have it drop through a hole. You do this by flipping around your controllerandyourself because the game is not responding to your movements, and you’re just trying not to fall out of your chair while playing this game.
The original games were point-and-clicks, but for some reason, they did not release this game with any ability to use the touchscreen option native to the Nintendo Switch. This actively inhibits this game because it still has the feel of a point-and-click but has none of the functionality of one. It’s like playing Stardew Valley on the Switch instead of on the PC – it’s just better with a mouse.
Some excellent quality-of-life additions to these games deserve a shoutout, though. For instance, the game features a helpful navigation assistant in the form of a white ring around Ashley’s model. It also has the puzzle hints feature that I mentioned before, which, as annoying as it may be for my proud self, is probably a nice thing to have if you take a break in the middle of a puzzle and need some help remembering what you were doing.
Closing Comments:
The periods between puzzles and cutscenes feel like content droughts; they’re too long and there’s not enough to keep the game feeling engaging. It’s primarily a walking simulator. The writing in the story babies you to the point that there is nothing to intrigue you or think about. You don’t have to be good at puzzles to play this game because it spoils its solutions, even with the puzzle hints turned off.Another Code: Recollectiondoes not land well for newcomers to the Another Code duology. The nostalgic value may be worth it to long-time lovers of the story, though. Additionally, it’s only a fifteen-hour game with limited exploration and replay value.
