Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth Review

Source: http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/2/945812_124374_front.jpg from Game-Spot

Warning: This could have Spoilers

So, being the Phoenix Wright fan that I am I bought this game and waited 3 weeks for it to arrive (This was a little painful given that everyone was playing it already)

So after a week of finishing it I decided to make a review about it.

Miles Edgeworth is a spin-off from the Phoenix Wright series, where we no longer focus on the courtroom but actually investigate like a detective. I like the fact that instead of doing the Visual Novel Type of gameplay where you don't see yourself, this time they made it more 3rd person perspective by showing Miles walking around and the like. It's a little refreshing really.



Gameplay: It was pretty identical to the Phoenix Wright series, save for the Logic feature. I like how they were able to make a feature of putting two pieces of information and makes it a conclusion. It's pretty much a simple way of how it seems to work in the real world, and simulating something like that must be credited.

Although, I wonder why they don't allow us to present profiles. I kind of found that challenging in the older games, but then again I guess it doesn't really count as "evidence". Random thought...moving on...

Almost forgetting to add you also have the Deduce button when examining a scene. This is where you link something in the crime scene to something you have in your evidence file. It really gives it an investigative feel to it because you need to think about things like that.

Characters: Most of the cast from the Phoenix Wright series were also here like Ema Skye, Gumshoe, Franziska, Wendy Oldbag, and more. Sadly, Phoenix Wright was not present in the game, but if you read closely you'll noticed they reference him a couple of times like "the guy with the blue suit", and so forth.

Of course, we have new people like Kay Faraday, Shi-Long Lang, Calisto Yew to name a few. As always, they all make an interesting cast of people which makes the game amusing to play

Story: Similar to the Phoenix Wright series you have different cases that connect to one big case, which always comes full circle at the last case. For this spin-off we have the mystery of the Yatagarasu, a Robin-Hood thief whose goal is to steal the truth and reveal to all and a big smuggling ring that Interpol is trying to hunt down.

In terms of quality, it still can be just as good as the Phoenix Wright series, but I still think Trials and Tribulations was the best game ever. I'm not sure if this is better than Apollo Justice or not...to me they are on equal ground.

The one thing that annoyed me was when I was practically at the end of the game where it was totally obvious who the killer was but he kept saying "YOU DON'T HAVE PROOF. HAHAHAHAHA" and the like.

It was already annoying enough that I thought it was the ending..but it wasn't to the point I was bored already, but the fact that I had to keep giving evidence to something SO obvious was just horrible. It just felt like they needed an excuse to stretch the game, but to the risk that the player was just bored. I mean, if they wanted us to understand in full detail how it happened they could have just arrested the killer and then just make Miles explain at the end by presenting evidence, etc.

Well, if anything it just proves the lesson learned in Apollo Justice: if evidence is always the thing to solve a case then the criminal will always get away.

Overall: Miles Edgeworth was definitely worth the money. I had a great time playing this game. It was a mix of the Phoenix Wright series with a little mix of new features that won't bore you. If you like Adventure games with fun dialogue and colorful characters with a twist in the story, this is the game for you.

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Mind's Eye: Secrets of the Forgotten review

It's been a while since I made a review.

So, today I will be talking about another HO game. Unlike most HO's this applies parallax scrolling, which is actually something you can see in a game as old as 1982, but it was applied to a Hidden Object game, which is pretty neat.

Off to review: Mind's Eye: Secrets of the Forgotten

Story: You are Gabrielle Jennings, a journalist trying to find the next hit story. What started out as a suicide turned into a murder which lead to investigating the subconscious.

Now, while there seemed to be a lot of details left unexplained (The game didn't really flesh out most if not all of the characters. Hell, one character was just there for ONE scene and you never see her again.) the core story was pretty good. I liked the idea that it dealt with amnesia without using the usual cliche amnesia plot. They actually based it on Amnesia that ACTUALLY exists. Kudos to some research. I hope next time they make the game a little longer. Placing difficult mini-games is a nice way to take my time, but it doesn't always work that way.



I'm talking about YOU!

Art: The scenes were WONDERFULLY done. I think it can be a little too dark for most casual gamers to play, but for me it was great. I partly wished they made the scenes more disturbing, but I guess that would mean a rating or something.

What irked me was the big discrepancy between the character art used in the dialogs with the character art used in the cutscenes. I dunno, for me it was a BIG turn off. While I found the character art in the game was beautiful, the one in the cutscene seemed rushed and thus, quality was compromised.

Another...has anyone noticed the OTHER discrepancy?




Dark tiles with green stuff on it.



Then it became brown....okay...

The actual game: Adding the parallax was a great innovation, so that's a big plus for me. In some ways it gave the player a slight difficulty to the game, since now you have a bigger scene to work with. The sad part was at most times I felt the parallax wasn't efficiently used. There are some scenes were you hardly have to use it. Why bother putting a feature like that if you won't maximize it?

Due to the parallax, it may have been a little harder to pick up items. I didn't have too much of a problem with most of it, but it's something a developer needs to consider in the future. My suggestion? Use bigger HO items.

Another thing I'd like to note is how the dialogue was written. The formatting at times was an eye-sore. There were times where the sentences weren't line-breaked too well.



So, what's the overall say?

Overall, it was a great idea and I think this will be in some ways a benchmark for HO games to go beyond what they are now.

That's all for now!

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Global Game Jam 2010

I've played a couple of games for a while but I didn't know if I was ready to review them.

But today I'll not be talking about another game I played, but I game I made.

For 48 hours I was part of the Global Game Jam.



What is the Global Game Jam? It's a game where groups make a game in 48 hours, or 2 days. There is a theme that everyone around the world has to apply in their game, and for each timezone they have their own restrictions.

I will let you know now that it's NOT a competition. It's basically jamming where people who may have just met on that day make a game out of tbe blue.

So how was my experience? It was...wow. I am so relieved I didn't back out from this.


Sadly, I didn't feel like I truly gave it my all with the game. I wanted to really design but I felt I didn't really design ans much as I had hoped.

It was still a good experience to make a game from start to end without help of an outside source. In a way it was an independent experiment and I am proud to be part of it.

That's all I can write for now. But anyway, if you want free games, go to Global Game Jam and look for something! There are loads of games you can find there! Read More......