Hands on impressions:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/hands-on-new-ac.html
Apparently, Capcom doesn't want you to know about Gyakuten Kenji, the latest game in its Ace Attorney series of lawyer adventures.
It is not giving out media screenshots of the Nintendo DS game, so the only screenshot is a tiny one I found on the official site. It didn't have the game in its media game preview area, so I had to book it down to the Tokyo Game Show floor as soon as they flung the doors open Saturday to get my hands on it before they closed the line off. Despite Capcom's very best efforts, I am now going to write about its game.
While the previous four games in the series have cast you as a defense attorney saving innocent clients, Gyakuten Kenji ("Turnabout Prosecutor") puts you in the role of prosecuting attorney Miles Edgeworth. While the game's graphic style is similar to the previous games, the gameplay is slightly different. Instead of navigating crime scenes by clicking menu buttons and exploring around you in the first-person, you actually walk Edgeworth around in third-person mode, accompanied by detective Dick Gumshoe, investingating the scene of a crime.
In the demo, a killer has just committed a murder inside of Edgeworth's office. Your hero shows up to find his files turned inside-out and a dead body on the floor. You can investigate the body -- the person was shot in the stomach, it turns out, and the ostensible murder weapon is right nearby. The victim's watch shattered when he hit the ground, putting the time of death at 2:15. This information goes straight into your inventory -- like the Phoenix Wright games, clues and the people you meet are filed away into this familiar interface.
Almost immediately, you'll be introduced to the game's new "Logic" system, which lets you re-enact all the Law and Order-style drama of watching a brilliant investigator put the puzzle pieces of a crime together. You'll find things out in your investigation. For example, in the demo you have the question -- why was this murder committed in your office? Was it pure coincidence? You'll have to investigate and find clues to solve this. Edgeworth brings up the fact that his office is always locked and he has the keys, meaning that it is difficult to get into the office.
So when you enter the "Logic" part of the game, you'll see all of these clues and pieces of knowledge, and your job is to arrange them into a logical equation that works. So, in this example, you click on the bit about the killer's choice of venue, and then about the keys, and Edgeworth puts these together into a logical conclusion: Because it's so hard to get into his office, the killer must have been there for a specific reason.
Apart from this, I didn't find much else to advance the game -- I think the demo might have just restricted players to investigating each thing inside the office.
You can control the game with the Nintendo DS' buttons or entirely with the touch screen. I found both to be totally workable. While I was able to roughly understand what was going on, I wouldn't want to play a game with such complex dialogue entirely in Japanese -- so hopefully Capcom's reticence about this game doesn't mean that it won't come to the U.S.
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So far, everything sounds good to me. Bring it on over, Capcom!
