Frog Detective 3: Corruption At Cowboy County review: a final farewell to a loveable series

The last Frog Detective game is here, marking the end of an era for everyone's favourite amphibian-based mystery game series. Our froggy pal has saved a haunted island from the clutches of ghosts, thwarted wizardous party-poopers in Warlock Woods, and now their investigatory prowess has taken him to the wild west. Frog Detective 3: Corruption At Cowboy County may be the last in Worm Club's trio of Frog Detective games, but it's also a certified banger, successfully joining the first and second games in putting a stupid smile on my face for the entire time I played.

Frog Detective 2 left us on a 3-year cliff hanger with a mysterious call from the Supervisor. He told us that Frog Detective needs to hop on a train to an undisclosed location to solve “a doozy” of a case in what possibly may be the most challenging mystery that our green friend has ever faced. No information, no details, all super-secret and ruddy mysterious to boot. Even Lobster Cop has been summoned to help out with the case, and he's the number one best detective in the world! Gasp!

Turns out that Cowboy County is the name of the place, and things aren't nearly as bad as the Supervisor made out - but there is still crime afoot. Upon arrival, Frog Detective learns that all the town local's hats have been stolen. What’s a cowboy without their hat? Not much of a cowboy at all, if you ask me. Helping the investigation are the town's newly appointed sheriff Mason Mole (who is a little bit sus) and the town’s currently hat-less residents.

Frog Detective needs to help the animal residents of Cowboy County with their problems in exchange for clues and snippets of information about the hat-snatcher. Anyone and everyone are suspects, no matter how friendly and cute they are (major respect to Frog Detective for their diligence). You have your trusty notebook for scribbling down character profiles and case info, as well as a rad scooter that you can ride around town. Frog Detective is also geared out in some brand-new cowboy booties; they do nothing except make Frog Detective look even more dashing than before, but this is important.

It’s a simple spaghetti network of trades but, like 1 and 2, it’s the characters and their dead-pan humour that make these games great. Locals vary from being super sweet to socially awkward to comically blunt, and the results are always funny. An exchange that had me howling was between Frog Detective and the town's talented cowboy poet Dusty. “If I stay in the sun too long my skin goes all crispy. I turn into a crispy fried snack,” Frog Detective explained, and Dusty replied, with incredible sincerity, “Is being crispy wrong, Detective?”

Character-wise though, I gotta give the crown to my girl Rhonda Dynamite, a tiny, rambunctious outlaw who’ll go toe to toe with anyone in a heartbeat, but also reprimands Frog Detective about giving out their full address to strangers. She’s great.

Conversations have the perfect balance of mundane and bizarre, and it’s impressive how every character is funny in their own distinct way. Meeting each person is always fun, and helping them gathering ingredients so that they can make a stew, or create the perfect portrait of themselves, or learn important life lessons, all contributes to the silliness of the humour. Cowboy County is also a bigger area than the first two games, but with the town only consisting of one street with a handful of buildings, much of it is open space, perfect for unleashing some epic scooter tricks around when you need a break from detecting.

There’s not much else to say about Frog Detective 3 without ruining the plot or stepping on punch lines to jokes. Here's what you need to know in short: it has the same earnest, good-natured fun with the same effortless comedy as the previous two games; it'll take you around an hour to complete (an hour and a half if you’re busy trying to do kick flips on your scooter); and finally, if you’ve played the first two then you’ll have a riot with this final episode. For those who haven't played 1 and 2, the complete trilogy is available to play over on Game Pass named Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery, and I highly reccomend you check them out before this one.