Everything you've come to expect, but without the courtroom
"What does it mean to be a prosecutor?" Well, if the Ace Attorney series is any indication, it means that your basically a lawyer who does a lot of detective work. You know, investigating crime scenes, searching for evidence, questioning witnesses, and all that other detective stuff.
In the latest in the series, titled Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, you'll be doing more of that, but from the prosecutor side as Miles Edgeworth, whom you may remember from previous games as Phoenix Wright's rival/friend.
The game has five cases, each with its own self-contained story. Each one is well presented, with plenty of twists and turns that keep you guessing who the culprit is, along with some excellent writing, and plenty of interesting, quirky characters.
The usual gameplay of the series remains unchanged. You'll still be investigating crime scenes looking for evidence, questioning witnesses, and cross-examining their testimonies. You can still avoid penalization by suspending before presenting evidence, and restarting the system whenever you're wrong. It zaps much of the difficulty presented by finding contradictions, but they still take some thinking to get by.
The difference here is that you're no longer spending any time in court. The action now takes place in the field, providing a nice change of scenery. The other change is that, instead of playing it from the first-person perspective like in previous games, you now see the game in third-person. It's not a big change by any means, but it does allow for a more thorough look of the crime scene, and much more freedom of movement.
Though its also brought some problems with it. Mainly the increased difficulty in examining a particular item. Unlike previous games where you could pinpoint exactly what you want to examine with a cursor (though you still can at certain points), you now have to walk up to it and hope that you examine the desired item. More often than not it works, but the times it doesn't will lead to much frustration as you try to figure out what it is you haven't yet examined so you can move on, which leads to this game's version of "pixel hunting."
Or if not that, you probably need to use some Logic to connect key points about the crime scene to reveal new info. How it works is simple: just take two important bits of information you've collected and connect them to form new info.
It's a cool addition, but it is also extremely simple. Connections between items are always very clear, so much so that you'll probably figure most of them out as they're added because of the characters comments that almost always reveal the connection by heavily alluding to it, making this an almost effortless task.
The game also makes some use of the touch screen, though it's limited to just examining certain pieces of evidence in three-dimensional form. None of the forensics stuff from the fifth case of the debut title, or Apollo Justice -- dusting for fingerprints, spraying luminol to find traces of blood, etc. -- are used here. It's a real disappointment, too, as their inclusion in other installments added a lot of variety to the investigation parts of the game.
That said, the basic gameplay is still enough to provide hours of entertainment. There's really nothing quite like the feeling you get from putting the pieces of a complex murder crime and revealing who the culprit is. That feeling is still as rewarding as it was in previous titles, and still never gets old.
The constant struggle between you and the culprit as you constantly disprove their attempts to feign innocence is a thrilling experience that requires much close inspection of their testimony, as well as some creative thinking. They go on for quite some time, with each step you take toward revealing the truth becoming harder and harder as they try to disprove the accusations against them.
They're also quite humorous. Pressing witnesses statements, while good for drawing out more info, often triggers some great exchanges between characters that are often completely unrelated to the case. The lighthearted nature of these exchanges add quite a bit of humor to the serious nature of the cases.
Overall, it may not stray from the series formula in any way, but it continues to deliver some great mysteries supported by a great, quirky cast of characters that longtime fans of the series and adventure game fans are sure to enjoy.
