Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law review (PlayStation 2)

Oh, and you do have to play this thing here and there--kinda, sorta, anyway. Attorney At Law's gameplay doesn't feel too far-flung from publisher Capcom's other legal eagle game franchise, Phoenix Wright. Most of the gameplay revolves around investigation and trying cases. The investigation portion is quite limited. You occasionally talk to other characters to find out information, and sometimes have to examine environments for evidence, though it's not like you have to look hard for any of this stuff. Each location has maybe five or six things, tops, that are highlightable, and maybe a single person to talk to. You click on everything, go through all the necessary dialogue sections (and even some of the unnecessary ones, if you want to see some hidden comedic gems), and then it's off to court.

The courtroom sequences are the most involved, though not necessarily for the right reasons. The only thing you need to do is interrogate witnesses on the stand. Each witness gives testimony about the current case, and through each piece of testimony, you can either press a witness on one of his or her statements, or present him or her with evidence that refutes or backs up these statements. Although some amusing stuff tends to come out of these courtroom proceedings, the actual game mechanics aren't much fun. Each bout of witness testimony ultimately devolves into you hitting the "press" selection for every piece of testimony, and then eventually picking out fairly obvious pieces of evidence. The trick is that you must present only the evidence that relates to a specific section of testimony. If you have the wrong bit of dialogue highlighted and present something, you lose a crest. You get five crests for each court scene, and if you lose them all, the game is over. Fortunately, the game is pretty good about saving right before each case, so you rarely have to redo much. These courtroom pieces might be the most gamelike portions of Attorney At Law, but they're also the least enjoyable.

Attorney At Law impresses most with its visuals, and that's true across all three platforms. The game emulates the art style of the show perfectly, though admittedly that hardly seems surprising considering the bulk of the game is a lot of cutscenes tied together with intermittent bits of interactivity. Nevertheless, those scenes look great. In fact, even outside of visuals, the differences between versions are practically nonexistent. The Wii version uses Wii Remote pointer controls for menu selections and such, and the PSP version is just a hair slower to load each scene than the two console versions. (It's a difference you'll only notice if you compare them side-by-side because it's really not all that bad.) Otherwise, any version of Attorney At Law is as good as another.

Attorney At Law ultimately falls in line with what a Harvey Birdman game should be. After all, if you're going to make a silly game about courtroom drama, there are limits to the number of ways you can actually make that interesting. Regardless, even if it does conceptually hit the mark, the execution of the rather sparse gameplay doesn't quite cut it. You'll actually forget you're even playing a game for long stretches, which is kind of a double-edged sword. It's good in that the hilarious storylines manage to hold your attention and keep you laughing all throughout. It's bad in that the game mechanics are so unobtrusive as to be borderline unnecessary. Any way you slice it, Attorney At Law probably isn't worth dropping $40 on, but it's an ideal rental for fans of the show.