What Is It?
As mentioned above, Dexter is a combination stealth/adventure game based on the hit Showtime series about a serial killer who works with the police by day, the series itself being based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay.

What We Saw
I played through bits of the opening mission, in which Dexter stalks a minister who has been killing choir boys. Game play involved wandering about digging up said boys, preparing the bodies in a room used to confront said minister, and then stealing his keys so I could hide in the back of his car to pounce.

How Far Along Is It?
There's still a ton of work to be done. The cut scenes are all placeholders, and the actually torture mini-game from AJ's preview looks to have been removed from this build, to be replaced with something else.

What Needs Improvement?
Lack Of Guidance: The game relies on visual cues to guide you through objectives, and with much of the level I played taking place in relative darkness the cues were hard to see. They purposefully had me play through on my own to see if I could work my way through, and I couldn't...so they definitely need to add a little hand-holding, especially once you consider the target audience of casual gamers.

Stealth Ain't Easy: Once again keeping in mind the target audience, the stealth portion of the game replies too much on trial and error for the casual gamer to put up with it. I tried sneaking up on my prey a few times, only to be spotted. My demo-helper tried it himself, and it took him several tries before he finally made it. If one of the game's creators is having that much trouble, one can imagine the average user is going to go insane.

What Should Stay The Same?
Atmosphere: I actually watched a few episodes of the show once I got home from E3, and I can say that Marc Ecko has a good handle on the look and feel of the show. After playing through the level I felt a bit dirty, but also somewhat justified and vindicated, which is how I'd assume one would feel in the same situation.

Graphics: Dexter's graphics are very well done for an iPhone game, easily the equivalent of a late title on the original PlayStation. The developers seem to have a firm handle on the iPhone's capabilities and are making the most of it.

Controls: While I didn't get to try out the accelerometer controls, the virtual joystick performed quite nicely once I got the hang of it. Using one thumb to control movement and the other to turn the camera about is an elegant solution that could only be made better by the addition of an additional virtual joystick on the right, instead of just moving your thumb about the screen to look around.

Final Thoughts
Dexter has quite a long way to go yet. While the polish and the passion are there, there are still several elements that could prove far too frustrating for a casual iPhone title, and casual is the audience they are courting here. Like Dexter himself, the game has the looks, but the underlying mechanics could be a real game killer.

Yes, Marc Ecko – that Marc Ecko – has expanded his efforts from rhinoceros-branded jackets and hats into iPhone games. Dexter for the iPhone isn't exactly his game label's first effort at it, but it may be the only one you've ever heard of. Ecko hopes to "scale up" Dexter to the Wii and later Xbox 360/PlayStation 3, which will be the first instance of reverse game development that I've ever seen if it happens.

What Is It?
Dexter for the iPhone is an adventure game that can be played in the first or third person. You play as the title character, a guy who runs around "solving" crimes as part of the police department and then takes justice into his own hands by offing the suspected criminal and storing a sample of their blood in his air conditioning unit.

What We Saw
In the midst of GDC chaos, I found myself in the awkward position of having to run eight blocks through downtown San Francisco with about 11 pounds of journalistic equipment on my back to make it to the 30th story of a posh hotel to spend exactly 20 minutes with the title before running another two blocks to go sit through this.

How Far Along Is it?
If there were such a thing as pre-pre-Alpha, the build I saw of Dexter would be it. I'm giving Ecko the benefit of the doubt, since his games label hasn't had much experience in development – but I couldn't stop myself from wincing when my demo master said the game was 20% done and then proceeded to show me a level with no collision and no objective, purely so I could walk Dexter around and… well, just walk him around. You could call fake levels like this proto-tutorial, but I call it a waste of time for a games journalist to see.

What Needs Improvement?
Lose the Accelerometer: There are several different ways you control motion in Dexter. The default is a set of two buttons that turn Dexter's body or the camera one way or the other, while the accelerometer (tilting the iPhone) actually controls his walking or running. It works in that Dexter does move when you tilt the iPhone, but it's broken in that it makes no sense to move the character like that. My demo master sure seemed to have the hang of it, but I don't think I've ever played any game with a less intuitive control system than if my keyboard had been dipped in concrete and then thrown down a well.

Improve the User Interface: The only UI you see throughout the game is a Mask score, which is a meter that determines how unsuspicious of Dexter the world is. The rest of the time, you don't have a map, an objective arrow or even a noise detector during the sneaking missions to help you out. The game is pre-pre-Alpha, so I'm hoping this will come together. But for now, it's definitely one of the things that needs the most work.

"Use the iPhone in a sawing motion" What?: Not even blowing into the DS mic will embarrass you as badly as Dexter if you happen to be playing the game in public. A crucial portion of the game requires Dexter to off his victims in various ways. My demo master was fond of the bone saw, and when killing time came, the game asked him to turn the phone on its side and actually make a sawing motion with it while the screams of the victim blared out of the speakers. Can you picture doing this on an airplane?!

Integrate the Mini Games: Dexter has a lot of potential to work in mini games. It's not that Ecko hasn't thought about them, it just seems like they haven't figured out which ones are the most important. For example, there are requisite sneaking missions that play out like mini games (get to the end of the hallway without this guy seeing you), but the actual mini game of identifying murder weapons via blood splatter patterns doesn't seem to be required or even integrated into the main game. For the record, that blood splatter game was way more fun than the sneaking – and doesn't Dexter have to do some work for the police to keep the façade up?

What Should Stay The Same?
The virtual joystick: Some of the testers on the game complained about the accelerometer controls, so Ecko included a secondary control scheme where a virtual joystick appears in the lower left hand corner of the phone (when it's turned on its side). This felt way more intuitive to me than the default controls and I'm even tempted to say they should add a second virtual joystick on the right hand side so that we finally have a handheld system that does what we wanted all along: controls almost one-to-one like a console game.

The fidelity to the show: I've got to hand it to Ecko; they aren't creating an utter bastardization of a show just to make a quick buck (sheesh, quick? This is an iPhone game that's been in development for more than a year and they're still in pre-alpha…). It sounds like they're working closely with Michael C. Hall to get the characterization down and the cut scenes for the game were crafted by one of the show's writers.

Final Thoughts.
I'm skeptical, but I see some good ideas going on here. The virtual joystick alone is a moment of "eureka!" for iPhone games. But trying to cram a console game's worth of stuff into one game sounds a little ambitious, not to mention ominous for your iPhone's batter life. Ecko plans to split the game up into three installments for the iPhone which would then be merged into one game for the move to console – if they make it that far. It may be that the clothing designer has bitten off more than he can chew both with the Dexter franchise and with the nature of iPhone gaming.

Dexter for the iPhone features Showtime's psychopathic killer character of the same name. Your job as the gamer is to help Dexter find, incriminate and kill bad, bad people which is somehow supposed to mitigate the fact that you're a murderer.

You'll have to wait a bit for my full hands-on preview. But as a preview to that preview, let me just say I'm on the fence about a 10 hour iPhone game. Don't get me wrong; in-depth stories sell games to people like me — but if I'm going to shell out $300 for a phone, wouldn't I want to use it for things besides gaming?

According to the official update on the game, Dexter will feature "puzzle solving, stealth tactics, mini-games, and 'slashing' with the iPhone itself" thanks to the device's accelerometer. The game will feature a script by writer Timothy Schlattmann and voice over work by Michael C. Hall.

It's described as a "premium" game, so expect to pay a premium when it hits the iTunes App Store this Summer.

Dexter, in development at Icarus Studios, is "'investigative' in style," a game in which "the player will analyze crime scenes, uncover evidence, and choose which brand of justice best suits the situation: the courts or the 'Dark Passenger.'" Think we're going to go with "Dark Passenger" by default. Wonder if there's a default setting for that.

While no gameplay was shown, Ecko revealed that the game would feature touch screen gesture controls, as well as incorporating text messages and phone calls in order to heighten the sense of immersion.

Comic-Con: Episodic ‘Dexter’ Game for iPhones [MTV Multiplayer]

Yes, details are scarce, but the folks who brought you Mark Ecko's Getting Up are apparently working closely with Showtime to get it right. We just hope it turns out better than all that CSI dreck Ubisoft keeps shoveling out.

Darkly Gaming Dexter [IGN]