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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS)
by LauraHannan
== Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney==
===The Story===
The game takes place in an unknown near-future country, based roughly on a caricature of the Japanese legal system. You playPhoenix Wright, a recently qualified defence attorney, and with the help of your trusty and loveable side-kick Maya Fey, you take on a series of ... cases and try to discover the truth behind each.
Unfortunately for Phoenix, there is no presumption of innocence until proven guilty, reflecting the actual practice in Japan (though it beginning to shift away from this as later games in the series explore). Not so much a reflection of Japanese law is that not even 'guilty until proven innocent' applies, but rather 'guilty until someone else is proven guilty instead'. So not only must Phoenix get his clients off the hook, but he must find the real killer and prove their guilt in court. In doing so he must beat his rival, the Prosecutor Edgeworth, a zealous, antagonistic man who has never lost a case and will do anything to achieve a guilty verdict.
The story is fantastic, as is the case with every game in the Ace Attorney series, and worth owning for that alone. The writing is zany, the cases unique and interesting and will hook the player from the start. The penultimate case (or the final case on the Advance port) remains the best case of the Phoenix Wright series (in my opinion), delving deep into the past of the Prosecutor Edgeworth and his rivalry with Phoenix as he find himself on trial for murder and only Phoenix will take his case. Its emotional, heart wrenching, but at the same time utterly hilarious in places - I played it at night on a ferry to France, secretly under the sheets of my bed, and had to get up and lock myself in the bathroom at one point because I couldn't stop laughing.
===The Gameplay===
There are two game modes, both 'point and click' in nature, the first where you search the various locations connected to the crime for evidence, question witnesses and try to work out what happened. The second place Phoenix Wright in court, where he must try to win the case by bleeding the lies out of witnesses on the stand and disproving the prosecution's evidence with his own. Mistakes are punished with penalties given by the judge; once the player accumulates enough they lose and a guilty verdict is handed down.
Overall the game is completely linear; there is only one way to advance the plot at any one given time and only one answer to any given puzzle, but the game does a surprising job of masking this by providing a range of locations to explore and people to talk to.
The one downside of the game is that the puzzles can be completely head scratching at times, and first time players will probably find them getting through some parts through trial and error (always save first if you are unsure), but overall it's fun to play and it feels incredibly rewarding when you work out a particularly difficult puzzle.
===The Characters===
Phoenix Wright is a strong protagonist, naïve, optimistic but determined and capable of holding his own in a battle of sarcastic comments. Maya Fey is a quirky and cute side-kick who was so popular with the fans that they ended up pasting her character onto every new side-kick for pretty much every other game in the series (I'm looking at you, Trucy and Kay Faraday), so that tells you something. Edgeworth, while starting off as a bit of a one-dimensional extremist, quickly gains a lot of character development as losing to Phoenix starts to break his mind and the reason for his obsessive need for a guilty verdict is revealed. By the end the players care deeply about them and their fates and want to see them succeed.
The side characters are all unique and a lot of fun to talk to, and though a lot of them are two-dimensional comic relief characters, you will still cheer when they show up for their obligatory cameo in future games. Some side characters are as well developed and loveable as the leads, especially the beleaguered Detective Gumshoe.
==Conclusion==
A must own for any DS or GBA owner. The story is top notch, the characters are captivating and its just an all-round great experience. Its also one of the most unique gaming series out there - I personally can't think of a game where you play a silly haired lawyer and cross-examine parrots. Make sure you get the DS version if you can, as it contains an extra case (and a really good one at that).
And play all the sequels too! You won't regret it.
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Apollo Justice Ace Attorney (DS)
by LauraHannan
== Apollo Justice==
The latest game in the Ace Attorney Series, how does it hold up?
===The Story===
The story takes place 7 years after the last Phoenix Wright game. It's really difficult to talk about the story without giving massive spoilers from the get-go, so suffice it to say we now play a new ... budding attorney, Apollo Justice. He begins his own quest to be the most ridiculous haired defence attorney of all time, embarking on a series of cases which are all, unbeknownst to him, mysteriously linked.
Overall the story is excellent, as is typical with Ace Attorney games. The cases have the right amount of ridiculousness and at the time doesn't sacrifice its ability to make you emotional invested.
The last case was...confusing however. Without spoilers, the manner of the game play creates several time paradoxes, leaving me unsure as to what...actually...happened. Don't get me wrong, the story is clear and the ending is strong, but it's head-scratching how the main character gets/knows about certain bits of evidence. You essentially play as someone else, in a different time period, for certain parts of the case, yet by the end BOOM Apollo has all the evidence, no questions asked. It's weird, and could have been executed/explained a bit better.
===The Gameplay===
It's pretty much the exact same gameplay as all other Ace Attorney games, a linear story telling game where you find the evidence, question everyone involved and uncover what happened, interspersed with court scenes where you must defend your client with evidence, rhetoric and a lot of luck and brain-scratching puzzles.
The main difference is that psyche locks are mostly gone (though they crop up again in the final case, leading to one of the most chilling scenes in AA history) replaced by a 'perceive' system. Apollo has the ability to easily spot people's nervous ticks and tells, the signs in your body language that show you are lying. The player must find them in witness testimony to gain more information or tear it apart. The first few start off easy, but they quickly progress in difficulty and become quite challenging to spot, making this an interesting and fun element of the game.
===The Characters===
Probably the biggest reason this game gets a bad rap in the AA community is that Apollo Justice 'isn't Phoenix Wright'; they changed the main character, so now it must suck. This is really unfair, as Apollo is as likeable and fun to play as Phoenix was in his first appearance; I strongly suspect if this game had come out first the fans would all be complaining about Phoenix Wright. He certainly isn't as well developed as Phoenix was by the end of his run, but that's only because the latter has had several games to grow as a character, while Apollo has yet to.
Par the course, the characters are zany, cool and a lot of fun to talk to. The new prosecutor rival, Klavier Gavin, is unique in that he is the only prosecutor that doesn't start as an amoral nutjob, and is actually a nice guy with the same passion for truth as the defence. It's fairly refreshing, and he is a very enjoyable character. The new side-kick, Trucy, while yet another Maya knock-off, is cute, funny and loveable. Both characters' lives are intimately tied up to the tragedies in the plot, making the player genuinely care about them both.
This wouldn't be an AA game without a heap of cameos from previous games, which Apollo Justice provides in spades. Unfortunately its missing a lot of the biggies (we don't find out what Maya is doing with her life 7 years on, nor Pearl or Edgeworth), but it's got Emma, Gumshoe, the Judge and of course Phoenix himself, who forms the crucial pivot of the plot. To a certain extent Phoenix tends to grab the spotlight a lot, pushing Apollo aside in places, but not to an excessive extent.
==Conclusion==
Any AA fan needs to own this game, and they need to give it a fair chance and not snub it just because of the main character change. It's an excellent game, and though not the strongest of the series, has the potential to set in motion a new set of games revolving around Apollo that are as engaging as the first lot. New players probably want to play the Ace Attorney series in order however, as the games rely very heavily on cameos and references to the plots of the predecessors, and so are not that accessible to newbies. That said, you won't regret playing the other games either.
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Pokemon Black (DS)
by LauraHannan
==Pokemon Black==
The latest instalment in the Pokemon series; how does it fare?
===The Story===
This is probably the most complex of the handheld Pokemon games in terms of story, but in spite of this it's still pretty formulaic. You're still a child kicked out of the house at an absurdly young age to run ... from town to town catching Pokemon, beating gym leaders and unravelling some secret (but completely unsubtle and cliché) cabal of bad guys, wondering why there isn't a police force in PokemonLand. That said, the latest Team Rocket expy, Team Plasma, have a very interesting twist to them that instantly elevates Black above the rest of the Pokemon franchise. They're animal rights activists.
It's a nice touch, as if Game Freak heard all the jokes about how horrific the PokeVerse is when you think about it (I wonder how my 151 pokemon that have been locked in a tiny ball inside a computer since 1998 in Pokemon Yellow are doing...) and made a little shout-out to all the older Pokefans out there. Unfortunately, they don't take it far enough; in the end, the player is assured that the activists were all just evil tricksters with an ulterior motive, and catching Pokemon and forcing them to fight for your amusement is good, honest. It's understandable, since every Pokemon game is essentially aimed at a new generation of youngsters who Nintendo don't want to put off with complex moral ambiguity, but sometimes I wish they'd make a game that rewards older fans for their loyalty to the series. This could have been it, but it missed the mark.
===The Gameplay===
There are now different types of battling to shake gameplay up, with double battles being available for wild Pokemon and triple battles and 'rotation battles' for trainers. These make travelling up long towers and roads much less of a repetitive slog and add a little bit more scope for strategy.
There are some nice little innovations to the time mechanism; the game now changes seasons as well as night and day, with certain Pokemon only appearing in certain seasons, and others changing their appearance depending on the season. Other little things have been changed to make gameplay flow a lot quicker, like slightly faster battles, and combining the PokeMart and Pokemon Centres into one building.
Mini-games are still available, the Contests of previous games being replaced with 'Musicals', which are much the same, and the Battle Subway fulfilling the role of the Battle Frontiers/Towers of previous games.
===The New Pokemon===
I've gotten the distinct feeling in recent years that the Pokemon production team are running out of ideas and have taken to sitting in the street making Pokemon out of anything they see. So how does Black fare? Well...there's an ice-cream Pokemon...and a pigeon Pokemon...and a garbage Pokemon...
And I feel silly for some reason.
===The Graphics===
Pokemon Black's graphics are really cool. Each gym has a unique and awesome design (there's a gym with rollercoasters in it!), and outside buildings look 3 dimensional even without 3D enabled, ranging from little villages to towering skyscrapers. In battle pokemon have even more animations, making the whole experience look a lot better.
===The Music===
Par the course for a Pokemon game: lots of catchy little jingles for every town, battle situation and so on. There are some really stand out pieces, such as Ghestis' battle theme, which I would happily put in my Top 5 most awesome boss battle themes of all time.
===Conclusion===
In summary, this is a solid game in the Pokemon franchise and a must have for any long term Pokeman, while as always being completely accessible to newbies. The music is great, the graphics are great, and the story is an improvement on the standard formula even if it doesn't go far enough. Much recommended!
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