Game of the Week: Another Code and the pleasure of in-game gadgets

Our Game of the Week is Another Code: Recollection. It's a lovely, generous reworking of two weird classics, and it's a perfect example of the oddities you get towards the end of the lifespan of a Nintendo console. But today I'd like to use it as a bit of a jumping-off point. Playing it this week I was reminded of how much I love games that give you gadgets to mess around with.

Another Code games are point-and-clicks, basically. You wander around a world, talking to people, interacting with puzzles, and trying to solve a grand mystery. But to help you, the hero Ashley has a device, known as a DAS, that she carries with her.

I love this stuff. In the original game, which came out early in the DS' lifespan, the DAS looked just like a DS - the original model before it got that sleek Jonty Ives reworking that propelled it to stardom. For the remake, running on the Switch, the DAS got an update. It resembles a Switch, but a Switch where the controls are all virtual, picked out on a touchscreen in bright neon lines.