NDS- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney
This game is awesome. At its core, its a classic point and click adventure game. This game could have been made 10 years ago. It definitely doesn’t push the limits of the technology by any means. But it easily engrosses and pushes the limits of your imagination.
The game puts you in the shoes of Phoenix Wright, an up and coming defense attorney, you must defend the innocent in court. This proves difficult in the face of lying witness, prosecuting attorneys that seem to fabricate evidence out of nowhere, and aloof judges. The game is very story driven, and all the cases have a personal connection to Phoenix, its not just random defense cases.
The writing is incredible and the stories are fantastic. It manages to keep you on the edge of your seat trying to figure out who did what. Its very easy to get engrossed. And the cases make sense, I only had to consult a walk through about once per chapter. The game does a good job of triggering ‘aha’ moments when you figure out what’s going on, then comes the challenge of proving it with evidence to everyone else.
The game has two modes, evidence gathering and court room. In evidence gathering mode, you travel around and try to figure out how to prove your client’s innocence. Once you’ve found all you can find, you hit the courtroom, cross-examining witnesses, objecting to their contradictions, and presenting evidence on your clients behalf. Saying anymore would spoil some of the crazy twists. Suffice to say, you’ll enjoy every minute of it.
And enjoying every minute of it is good, because you’ll only play it once. There is literally no replay value. The game is 100% linear, granted it doesn’t feel that way as you play it, but really, there are no branching paths or alternate solutions. Its about 15 hours long, so not too bad really, but if you can knock out 15 hours of game play in 3 or 4 days, the game is really best suited as a rental unless you want to have it for collection sake, as even a year later, this game will still be the same and you’ll already know the solutions.
