Guilty Party (Wii)

There have been plenty of games based off of Disney shows and movies, some of them being high quality games that can capture the feel of the franchise they are adapting. Sometimes the game will even take recognizable franchises and introduce entirely new ways to experience them, the likes of Epic Mickey and Kingdom Hearts giving players brand new ways to experience properties they already enjoyed. However, these are all relying on the appeal of preexisting material, so very rarely did it seem like Disney’s creative touches would ever transfer from the realm of film and television into the gaming world. However, the 2010 Wii title Guilty Party really does feel like something that captures that famous Disney magic with all new characters and situations to boot.

Guilty Party is the tale of the Dickens Detective Agency, a large quirky family of investigators whose rival Mister Valentine pesters them by committing every crime imaginable and taunting them with letters that give clues on what his next caper shall be. The leader of the family, The Commodore, is preparing to retire, but Mister Valentine sees this an opportunity for his most ambitious crime wave yet. To motivate his family to finally put a stop to this frequent felon, The Commodore promises whoever can catch Mister Valentine will be the new person in charge of the agency, so six members take off to follow the clues, traveling around the world to try and foil the capture of a singing manatee, the attempted murder of an opera singer, and the kidnapping of the Commodore’s wife Olivia.

Rather than just being a simple framework for the investigative gameplay, the story of Guilty Party is told through many cutscenes brimming with character, the moments at the start and end of the case where the detectives get to interact a highlight of the experience. Each of the six selectable characters bring an important angle and avenue for humor to the game’s scenes, and while the game as a whole is family-friendly, murder attempts even being depicted as the more sanitized crime of knocking someone out with something that should have been lethal, the jokes are likely to please an entire family. Charlotte is The Commodore’s sister, this short old lady being a spicy individual who isn’t afraid to rough up rude customers while still having a sweet side. Her husband is the much younger Butch Johnson, an ex-cop whose soft-spoken manner and fit body make it likely he was inspired by mixing together an 80s cop with Mike Tyson. Their adoptive daughter Ling-Ling is an overeager girl detective who contributes a teenage perspective to the group while taking the dogged traits of her parents and pursuing it through a more nagging style. Max Dickens is the Commodore’s son and almost fits the hard-boiled detective type, but his love of food means his mind wanders to food-based metaphors and a sandwich is never far from his hand. Phoebe Dickens is his sister, and she’s the no-nonsense type of the team, balancing out the tangents and silliness of the others by putting the events back on track when necessary, a very important personality type for the mother of Kid Riddle. Kid Riddle is likely to be the most divisive character, his jokes often random or a little too juvenile, but while kids may enjoy his jokes, older players can enjoy the fact that no other character in the game is particularly amused by his nonsense.

Seeing how these six bounce off each other, guess at the current crime, pressure the criminal, and quibble over details makes each case in the game’s story mode feel almost like an episode of a T.V. show. However, rather than being fully episodic, there is a building narrative at play, and jokes set up early on get payoffs in some glorious ways later down the line. The story mode can even be played in co-op, allowing for a family or group of friends to enjoy the tale surrounding the more structured mysteries found in Guilty Party. Each mystery also has a good amount of build up at play. Coming into a new location like the aquarium, cruise ship, train, or the Commodore’s mansion, you need to gather evidence and testimony to try and figure out the guilty party for that particular case. The people who you need to speak to are just as chock full of personality as the detectives, although they lean much harder into profession stereotypes to derive their humor. The judge, a short woman named Judith Prudence, will use courtroom terminology when you approach her for testimony,  and Ed Mission speaks like a drill instructor as is befitting his role as a General. Characters tend to reappear across multiple cases, although reasonably former guilty parties disappear from the line-up, but spending extra time across levels with the maid who carries poison openly in her pocket or the mad scientist Morgan Harvest only makes it harder to determine who might be the culprit. Seeing a long time tag-along turn traitor while someone suspicious is still hanging around gives each new case the impression that anyone in the area could truly be the suspect, and if you play the multiplayer party mode this can be literally true as the competitive version of the game will randomly select a culprit for a race to see who figures out the case first.

The actual process of unraveling the case takes place in locations arranged almost like a board game taking place in a dollhouse. Every turn of play involves the player being allotted a certain amount of action coins, and to traverse the level and interact with people or clues, you’ll need to spend some to move about the rooms of the cross-section view of the level. At first, most cases involve you just needing to figure out the height, weight, gender, and hair length of the culprit, only one character fitting the ticket once you’ve got all the details figured out. Later levels introduce the idea of alibis though, some characters eliminated from the suspect pool by having confirmed reasons for not being the guilty party. However, even after you get the testimony from someone, it’s not as simple as just being told the person is tall or short. First off, the interviewee might tell a lie, meaning a highlighted part of every clue has to be tested with your lie detector. Next comes trying to interpret some of the less direct clues. You might not be told a character is skinny, instead you’ll find a piece of evidence in a cranny that only someone thin can slip through. You might find a piece of evidence that seems to outright confirm something only to have another character reveal that it was used for a different purpose, invalidating what seemed like a perfect lead. Jumping the gun and accusing a character early is possible, but if you can’t back up all your claims with the right evidence, you will lose one of your three chances to blame a suspect. There is a turn limit as well, and while it won’t be felt too much in Story Mode, multiplayer matches can come down to having to use incomplete pictures as best you can, although the game does, in an odd bit of mercy, provide all the clues you need if turns run out in a final “accusation round” where all players get a chance to try and blame someone. Usually though, the multiplayer version of things does involve clue sharing by the nature of viewing the screen at the same time, but putting them together can still be enough of a challenge that you can figure the mystery out before another player by puzzling out the true meaning of some of the evidence and testimony.

Guilty Party isn’t just about running around places to talk to people and find stuff though. Cards come into play as well, the player able to use special items to help them get around or influence their ability to act. Mister Valentine likes to crop up in levels and cause mischief, turning out the lights in a room so you can’t interact with anything, placing traps that will teleport players around, and even stealing coins to limit what can be done on a turn. He’s used relatively well in the story mode, but competitive multiplayer matches involve him cropping up fairly regularly, players able to pick how he impacts other players. That ability to choose which trouble hits the opposing players can make multiplayer really hard because of his ability to rob coins and booby trap so much of the level. You do get cards of your own though that can overcome Mister Valentine’s traps or aid in the investigation. Cards can give you additional actions, allow you to investigate evidence from afar, can open locked doors or light darkened rooms, and can even influence the actions of the suspects. People like to run around the level between turns and may even flee if you try to corner them for questioning, so some cards will force them to act in certain ways to allow you to hunt them down better.

The process of uncovering evidence, interviewing suspects, and even undoing some of Mister Valentine’s more damaging tricks is represented in game by minigames, and there’s a frankly ingenious degree of difficulty balancing at play when it comes to these. Players of different skill levels will interact with different difficulties for the minigames, the game increasing their complexity the better you do or even potentially knocking down the difficulty if you continue to fail. Story mode does this dynamically while competitive parties allow you to start at your chosen difficulty, both modes making sure to ask before they bump you down but upgrading you to ensure you aren’t cheesing the game if you don’t need the handicap. Failing a minigame will mean you don’t get the information and lose your action coin, so these aren’t just here to add action to a game that is otherwise focused on thinking and humor.

Many of the minigames in Guilty Party try to be cute twists on things a detective might find themselves doing. Bribing a suspect to talk requires you to put a stack of cash in their hand, more complicated versions having fidgety characters and someone else trying to steal the cash as you do so. You may have to “put words in their mouth”, a literal version where they try to avoid you throwing speech bubbles into their mouths as best they can. Tearing off ridiculous disguises that they gradually put back on, unlocking safes with the evidence inside, ripping wallpaper down to find hidden objects, squishing literal surveillance bugs, and many more ideas make these minigames a good fit as silly twists on mystery solving concepts, and the fact the suspects can often crop up in the games and have hilarious reactions as you play is just the icing on the cake. Some minigames can be played in co-op like fixing busted fuses or repairing water damage on the cruise ship, and while there are certainly some that are simple no matter what difficulty level you’re on, others can reach pretty difficult heights. The motion controls used often in these do their job well, so while trying to match the rhythm needed for hypnotizing a suspect is hard, it’s not because the game is reading inputs incorrectly. There probably should have been an even higher difficulty beyond where it reaches its cap though to try and ensure these diversions always carry their weight, but there is an alternate play mode where players can compete to either break records by playing single minigames or try to outscore each other in a string of them. Here, even though a minigame might be easy, doing it the fastest or most effectively can be a challenge even in the simplest little games, meaning that a minigame competition can still remain competitive no matter how good you think you are at the main game’s versions of them.

THE VERDICT: Viewing Guilty Party just for its gameplay shows that the core mystery solving and the design surrounding how you investigate each case still does a wonderful job of making a game out of the detective work, the minigames and ability cards a lovely cherry on top that adds interesting complications and more typical play to the process. The degree of personality infused into the plot and characters though is where Guilty Party evolves beyond just being a fun way to make mystery solving into a family friendly multiplayer video game. This truly feels like something deserving of the Disney name, the style and story delightful and the quality of the gameplay shining through because of it.

And so, I give Guilty Party for the Wii…

A GREAT rating. Even with some moments where the difficulty could be tinkered with to make things more exciting for experienced players, Guilty Party still delivers in almost every regard where it counts. The plot is filled with fun mysteries and enhanced through its unusual and lively characters, their interactions with each other and suspects continuing to entertain during a story that definitely had thought and love put into it. The mystery solving side of things does have some speed bumps in competitive multiplayer and minigame design, but when viewed as a whole it provides plenty to think about when it comes to uncovering evidence and connecting testimony while also providing moments of quick play where you need to get involved in the minigame surrounding the clue. A more difficult accusation process could be interesting too, but there’s still so much charm to the cast, strategy in moving about the board game like levels, and thought put into ways to spice up the action like Valentine events or flighty suspects that Guilty Party definitely feels like its a well-rounded experience on the whole.

It’s a shame that Guilty Party never got widespread attention, but that might be the peril of a well-known company trying something original in the gaming sphere instead of leaning on recognizable properties. Guilty Party has the degree of quality and charm you would expect from something wearing the name of one of Disney’s larger franchises though, and the fact they managed to make a fun multiplayer title out of solving mysteries is just as refreshing to see. The concept may be a hard sell for some, but from the construction of its cases to a wonderfully catchy theme tune with lyrics, there is a lot to love if you decide to investigate Guilty Party.