Review by Eric Ditzian
Here is today's leisure time pop quiz: Do you enjoy shoveling dirt? Do you ever think to yourself, "Gee, ain't it a ton of fun to tape plastic wrap to a wall?"
If you answered yes to either of these questions, if for some nutty reason you genuinely dig household chores, by all means download "Dexter: The Game" off iTunes, because those are the first two tasks you'll face when you fire up your device and step in to control everyone's favorite TV serial killer. It's a confounding gaming experience that only gets more frustrating as it slugs along and as I kept wishing I'd been asked to review the Showtime series starring the gifted Michel C. Hall rather this game.
Your task is to lead Dex through a storyline that largely covers the show's first season, investigating and then executing the amoral murderers he targets while maintaining the veneer of a normal life as a blood spatter analyst with the Miami police. You navigate through environments via a two-joystick set-up (there's also a tilt control mode), collecting clues, consulting your Journal for tasks and every so often clicking your GPS to travel from location to location. Along the way, you encounter mini-games that take advantage of the iPhone's touch screen and accelerometer capabilities. At no time does the game even begin to approach the sweaty-palmed pleasures of the show.
Take that first assignment: collect evidence on a murderer and prepare your kill room for your own version of twisted justice. Sounds pretty cool until you realize what this level entails is slowly running around in the dark, rapidly tapping the screen to dig up detail-free graves, and then touching and repairing plastic sheeting in the kill room. I assure you this is all as boring as it sounds. When it actually comes time for the kill, the screen goes black and you trace arrows to simulate bloody slashing movements. I felt seriously ripped off. A "Dexter" without a little gore, without even a stab at realism, is no "Dexter" I can get down with.
And so it goes for the rest of the game. The game asks almost nothing of you in terms of actual investigatory work and the use of memory skills from level to level, nor does it submerge you in the high-stakes tension of committing a crime. What you're left with is straight-up dull. Lots of boring mini-games to unlock that mimic things like Simon and Whack-a-Mole. Opportunities to exchange dialogue with characters that never require much creativity on your part. The need to perform mundane tasks like fetching donuts and taking Dex's girlfriend for a crab feast. Sure, many of these scenes were in the TV show, but shouldn't a video game select only the most fun elements?
Gameplay could not be less intuitive, as completing levels is often a case of trail-and-error rather than skill and I spent far too much time running around environments confused as to how to complete a task. Game designers seemed to understand this limitation, as there are near-constant pop-up instruction screens that tell you what you need to do and how you need to do it. Only problem there is the text is often imprecisely written, giving you no further insight into the game, as was the case with a beyond frustrating puzzle that had me shouting unprintable words at the iPhone.
The coolest parts of the game are the frequent, in-game short videos with surprisingly high quality animation of Dexter interacting with characters or environments and the creepy-calm voiceovers Hall contributes throughout. But if we're talking about kicking back and watching, might I recommend a different diversion: watch the freaking show!