Barbie Detective: The Mystery Cruise

BARBIE DETECTIVE: THE MYSTERY CRUISE (Playstation)

This is a fun little game requiring patience, thought and a bit of skill. You play as a member of Barbie's detective agency, and direct Barbie around looking for clues to help solve the mystery of the stolen artwork on board a cruise ship. Barbie searches rooms and desks, etc. and interviews characters she meets, inputting everything into the crime computer for later analysis, where Barbie will give her opinions about things. She finds some useful items along the way, but begins with just her special detective gear - an infrared lipstick to uncover hidden fingerprints, a compact to dust the prints, and a mobile 'phone to photograph prints and send them to the crime computer. Barbie has a cruise ship to explore, as well as three nearby islands with interesting things to do at every location.

While searching for clues and fingerprints Barbie can take a break and enjoy a game with Teresa, or else against a second player. Here is where the most useful feature for a Barbie game - the difficulty setting - can be altered to make it more of a challenge to win against the computer, and the hard setting is indeed very hard. There are three fun and interesting games to play. There is a fun jetski race, with ramps to jump and huge beach balls to avoid. There is also an awesome glider race, in a kind of hang glider with a propellor. These two races are challenging and exciting, but for a more relaxed and tactical game, also requiring skill, there is shuffleboard. You can either play against Teresa, another player, or play in a tournament with the other characters on the ship.

These games aren't just a fun distraction. Learning a bit of skill in the vehicle racing games will turn out to be useful at the end of the game when the thief decides to try and escape, and it ends with an exciting chase across the sea and through the air. And while playing single games of shuffleboard, this offers the opportunity to listen in on the conversations going on nearby. These little pieces of information are sometimes useless, but will sometimes be an important clue worth recording. Apart from the fun games the main part of what makes the game interesting is analysing everything, consulting with Barbie, and trying to figure it all out for yourself before the big reveal when the fingerprint analysis is complete. The more you search and get people to talk the more clues you will find that point to the truth, and you can talk to the other detective team members for help in how to progress if you get a bit lost.

Overall this game is a lot of fun, both as a challenge that can be adjusted to the skill of the player, and as something that makes you think and get involved in the game. Once you've completed it, when you play again there will be differences throughout and probably a different thief, so you can play again and again with a new mystery to solve each time. The optional games were a lot of fun, especially the way they were part of the story, making the whole experience a great combination of enjoying a leisurely cruise around some interesting islands while also solving a mystery, returning some stolen artwork and catching a thief in the final chase scene.

I'd recommend this one for anyone as a great little detective game that can be played multiple times with a different outcome, and you can get as much fun out of it along the way as you want. It's like going on holiday to have some fun and getting involved in an exciting mystery adventure as one of your activities.

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