Famous models disappear into the night, teenage girls are chopped into pieces in dank hotel rooms, and corrupt doctors murder patients for the mob. New York has always been a rough city, especially for the innocent victims and those police officers who must solve them. Fortunately, you’re on the case.

Unsolved Crimes puts you in the role of a NYPD homicide detective during the turmoil of the 1970’s. With your partner, you must solve a series of grisly murders. If that wasn’t stressful enough, your partner’s sister is kidnapped and the two of you have to crack the case before she becomes yet another victim. Should be easy, right?

If the description of this title reminded you just a little bit of Phoenix Wright, you wouldn’t be too far off. Unsolved Crimes has quite a few similarities with everybody’s favorite lawyer simulation. You examine crime scenes for clues, which in turn allow you to figure out whodunit. As you uncover clues or solve puzzles, you’ll be asked to answer questions about the case. These questions will test your logic and how closely you’ve been paying attention. You might be asked to present evidence to prove a claim or point out a contradiction in a piece of testimony. Once you’ve answered enough of these questions, you’ll be able to make a report to your chief and move on to the next stage of the case.

To keep things from getting stale, you’ll occasionally play through short minigame cases revolving around the kidnapping subplot. In one such level, you have to shoot your way out of a trap in an on-rails lightgun-style segment. Another puts you behind the wheel of a car as you chase down a suspect. These stages are a pretty neat way of shaking things up a bit. The shooting stage in particular really puts me in the mood for a Time Crises on the DS.

Unsolved Crimes is great for adventure fans that have been craving a more mature experience on the DS. Touch Detective and Phoenix Wright are great, but they are pretty family friendly. As you’d probably expect from a game where you’re a homicide detective, Unsolved Crimes is pretty grim and gritty. A few of the murders are fairly shocking, and you deal with some utterly depraved suspects. Everyone is harboring some sort of dark secret, and even the innocent ones may be utter scum. The time period, in particular, helps maintain that gritty atmosphere. You don’t have clean labs to examine DNA evidence; you don’t even have computers to help you out. Even the hospital seems kind of seedy.

The controls and interface are fairly standard adventure game faire. You move with the d-pad and look around using the stylus. I do have to warn you, the default stylus scheme sucks. Immediately open up the option menu and switch the stylus style from “slide” to “touch.” You’ll save yourself several minutes of frustration. After that, movement is pretty smooth. An on-screen slider allows you to change the height that you’re viewing from, this is fairly crucial when looking for certain evidence. Double-tapping on objects allows you to examine them. Any piece of evidence can be viewed in 3D, where you can magnify or rotate it to find details that you may have missed earlier. Occasionally, you will use tools to interact with objects, like rotating a screw or flipping a lever.

The controls generally work well, but there were occasional stumbles. A few of the puzzles require precise movements that the DS touch screen is just not well suited for. One particularly frustrating example was a puzzle where you had to enter a combination. Ending on the right spot took a few tries. In general, problems occur when you have to click on something tiny, the DS screen is just too small. There were a few moments where I wish I had a zoom button.

Each of the main cases in Unsolved Crimes takes around half an hour to forty-five minutes, pretty much perfect for quick handheld gaming bursts (the kidnapping cases are around five minutes or less). In total, it’s probably about six or seven hours long - maybe more depending on how good you are at logic puzzles. I recommend stringing it out for a while. I played the entire game over a couple of longer sessions and, while I really enjoyed it, I was disappointed by how short it felt.

If you’re into adventure games, dug the cross-examination aspects of Phoenix Wright, or just appreciate a good mystery, I definitely recommend Unsolved Crimes. If you can get over a few control issues, you’ll have a great time diving into the title’s twelve cases.