Geekscape’s Impressions of a Killer iPhone Game: Dexter

I’ll be honest with you right off the bat: I don’t own an iPhone. In fact, the thought that I can easily drag my addiction to e-mail, Facebook and Geekscape out of the house and into the other parts of my life terrifies me. Most days, when I get home from running errands or taking meetings, I look forward to checking my e-mail like a kid on Christmas.

But all this might soon change. Every week, it seems as though more and more iPhone games and apps are hitting the market and calling for me to take my vices off of the desktop and partake in them with the outside world. And this week, that vice is my addiction to Showtime’s Dexter. Earlier this week, I got a chance to sit down and check out a hands on demo of the Dexter iPhone game coming out later this summer. I’d been hearing about the game, developed by Marc Ecko Entertainment, for a few months now and was interested but not quite fully invested. But after spending the better part of an hour dragging, poking, tilting and slashing through the opening scenes, I might just be changing my tune permanently.

“Olly olly oxen free!”

First off, the game is an incredibly detailed story reenactment of the first season. The game is launching later this summer with the first of 4 episodic downloads. Over the course of all 4 episodes, players will follow Dexter through the Ice Truck Killer storyline from the first season. If this seems like a tall order, to accurately convey all of the story details and twists and turns from that season, just know that the first downloadable episode clocks in at 6 to 10 hours of gameplay with each of the 3 subsequent episodes taking 4 to 6 hours to complete each. That’s a lot of game time. And it should be, because there’s a lot of ground to cover.

Matsuka’s probably saying something perverted right now…

The first scene in the Dexter game is the exact same opening scene from Season One. Dexter finds himself stalking a choir instructor who has been killing the children he is in charge of and burying them in shallow graves. The graphics and rendering are pretty good for an iPhone game and Michael C. Hall has provided an original voice over that takes you through the actions and cut scenes. Now in Dexter’s shoes, players are tasked with collecting “evidence” towards the suspect by first acquiring a shovel and then searching around the barren yard for fresh graves to dig up. You have a choice in how you move Dexter. There’s a drag area on the left for your left thumb to move Dexter in various directions and one for your right thumb to move around his point of view. This works a lot like dual analog sticks. You can also eschew the right thumb dragging for the tilting of the iPhone to look around. Either way, movement is pretty straight forward (even if I was quickly identified as someone who obviously “doesn’t play a lot of iPhone games”).

When you get close enough to an object that Dexter can interact with, like the shovel, you can click a command to take it. Approaching fresh graves will trigger a cue to dig that leads to a rhythm tapping mini-game for digging. Accomplishing these tasks not only provide evidence towards a suspects guilt (Dexter will only kill a suspect he finds 100% guilty), it also provides points towards Dex’s “Mask Bar”. The Mask Bar fills for accomplishing tasks successfully, avoiding suspicious activity and interacting with other characters in a friendly manner. If you act more aggressively or fail mini-games, Dexter’s Mask Bar depletes and he is found guilty.

Doakes is still pissed about that last bowling score.

The other variable bar to keep track of is Dexter’s “Dark Passenger” bar. In moments of the show, like when Dexter lashes out at Rita’s ex-husband Paul or gets violent with his convicted victims, Dexter is taken over by a his Dark Passenger. The Dark Passenger wasn’t completely explained in the demo but I’m sure it does something to effect other character’s suspicion of you and your Mask Bar. Still, it’s pretty fun to let the sicko’s have it or give an angry reaction to another character’s question.

Make sure to kick the tires before you buy it used!

Once Dexter has collected enough evidence through searching and completing mini-games, it’s time to put the pieces together for a perfect kill. This first involves preparing the “kill room” by dressing it in plastic, cleaning it up and checking for tears that might give you away to detectives like Doakes. After setting the room up, it’s time to hunt. In the demo I played, I waited for the Choir Instructor as he left his building and headed to a band stand down the street. Similar to following people in GTA, if you get too close or don’t duck and hide at the right times, you will get caught. Using the dual analog control scheme, you have to successfully follow the suspect to a certain area within a given time limit where a cutscene of the kidnapping will take place. Upon finishing the cutscene, you start a series of mini-games in the kill room where you select a grisly murder weapon, interrogate the prisoner until he admits his guilt and then trace slashes with your finger across the screen to simulate the cutting (don’t worry if you’re timid about the violence like me… you’re tracing directions over a censored black screen while leaving blood splatters behind). Upon successful completion, you are awarded Mask points and your Dark Passenger is effected. Congratulations! You’ve just performed your first kill!

So many choices…

Now that our first scene from the show is behind us, the rest of Dexter’s world opens up. You can click on Dexter’s journal menu to keep track of your other suspects, search locations or meet with other characters. Your sister Deb might have information that will add to your suspect files so meeting with her is beneficial if you can successfully navigate the conversation. Similarly, taking Rita out on a date (yay!) puts you near where Angel is discovering the latest victim of The Ice Truck Killer. You can talk to Angel, but don’t make Rita suspicious, and vice versa. Luckily, taking Rita out to eat crabs opens up another fun mini-game: Crab Smashing! This is a pretty simple touch game where you gain points for tapping the craps and lose them for letting crabs escape. It effects your Mask and Dark Passenger so games like this are important throughout the story.

Deb showing off her “sassy pose”.

So there you have: my first moments as an iPhone killer! Again, the game comes out later this summer and is being offered at what I’m told is a “Premium Game” price. Those of you with more experience in the iPhone store will know where that puts us financially but I have some high hopes for the game. The controls, which I found a little tough (but again, I’m not iPro) are supposedly close to done while the build of the game is also nearing completion. All in all, the animations are nice, the size of the story is impressive and the mini-games are numerous and challenging enough to keep things interesting. Hopefully, by the end of summer we’ll all have something to help tie us over until Dexter Season 4 premieres! That is, unless you’re completely iPhone challenged like myself!