I'm very wary of licensed games. While they can be good or even great in some instances(Batman, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction), most of them fall prey to tight development schedules and a strict leash to the licenses' content.

It's a curiosity then, that Dexter the Game on iPhone falls somewhere inbetween the two camps. Not restricted to a release date or upcoming event, but also adhereing to a already established storyline, Dexter the Game makes you feel like titular serial killer, frustrations and all.

The tv show follows Dexter Morgan, a blood analyst on the forensics team at the Miami Metro Police Department. Dexter though, hides his alternate ego as a serial killer who only stalks criminals who have gotten away from justice. While Dexter displayed the common traits of a serial killer at a young age, his foster father Harry, who was also a police officer, taught him how to channel his "Dark Passenger" into cleaning up the streets and how to not get caught. The game smartly takes all these aspects and distills them into common game design ideas that make sense and draw you into the world of Dexter.

The game covers the first half of season 1, albeit in a much abridged manner, and has you gathering evidence to prove your victims are guilty, setting the stage for your kill, and then finally committing the deed. In addition, you'll be solving a larger case of another dangerous serial killer and juggling your "life" as a forensics analyst and loving boyfriend. This is conveyed by your two halves, the Dark Passenger and your Mask, fighting each other depending on decisions and conversations you have. Don't properly secure your kill room, or make mistakes in your investigation? Your Dark Passenger Meter will rise and you'll lose some humanity. But if you properly secure everything or choose the right or even brighter answers in a conversation and your Mask will rise, proving your ruse believable. If the Dark Passenger Meter rises above the Mask one, you lose the game, but the game makes it manageable and always provides another opportunity to gain some Mask points if needed.

You'll carry out your investigations by controlling a third person Dexter using a standard dual stick control scheme. As you travel between locations, you can search the environments for clues or talk to other members of Miami PD to gather evidence for the cases you are following. Each case has a set number of evidence pieces you must find to further the case. You don't need to find every piece to proceed, but not doing so makes you lose Mask points for being sloppy. The cases can be tackled in any order, which is a nice feature, if you get stuck on one or want to take a break from the main case to get some killing done.

The kills and every other major function aside from the investigation is executed by playing a mini game. You'll be tapping crabs to bash them, matching DNA samples by tapping colored dots, or even slashing at bodies by tracing lines on the screen. The games are never repetitive or go on longer than they need too, and serve their purpose for communicating what function you are performing. These are actually finer parts of the game, as they don't require any extensive or fine control. It's the segments where you are sneaking up on your victim or performing surveillance where the game's control falls apart and it becomes frustrating.

The virtual control sticks don't provide the fine precision or feedback needed to accurately sneak  behind someone. You can follow your victim, and even though the screen gives you an alert when they are about to look, it's a mess trying to quickly find a spot to hide using two dodgy virtual sticks. The same proves for the surveillance, where you must "blend in" and interact with everyday objects so the target doesn't feel they are being watched. The problem here is that while you move from object to object, you are granted a blend in token that can be used to get you out of a possible fail. These tokens are random when they are given to you though, and again, the control can bar you from effectively moving to the object you need to interact with. Couple this with the random tokens and it becomes frustrating, a trait you don't want in a portable game, much less an iPhone game.

There's a lot for fans of the TV show to digest here and it does a wonderful job of conveying the show's content into the video game format. If you're a fan of the show or love adventure games, I recommend Dexter the Game. Just be ready for some frustrating sections and controls that show they aren't well suited for the adventure game genre.

Score: B-