Lawyer simulations. Probably not the most obvious of genres to come up with, but thanks to Capcom's whimsical take on law enforcement, it's become a rather amazing genre nonetheless. Since its debut on the Game Boy Advance in 2001, before finding its footing on the DS more recently, the Phoenix Wright series has captured all the drama of the court, putting you in the shiny shoes of the titular defence attorney Phoenix, as you collect evidence, cross-examine witnesses, and generally crack crazy cases (which usually involve some sort of murder). Originally announced as Ace Attorney 5 last September, things have been fairly quiet on the courtroom drama front, with nary a peep nor a whistle about whether the game would be reaching these shores - until now.
The game has been redone to look more 3D.
Renamed Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, the game sees everyone's favourite spiky-haired lawyer return to the courtroom, although things aren't quite as he left them. Set a whopping eight years after his last appearance, the first case kicks off in a destroyed courtroom - and it's up to our main man Phoenix and his team at the Wright Anything Agency to work out what happened. As per usual, you'll have to examine the scene of the crime for evidence as you try and piece together what's happened, before taking it to the dock and grilling the suspects. Listening to what each suspect says carefully, you'll have to pick the right times to interject with the right evidence to contradict their point, and force them into an admission. It's a game that's all about observation, memory, and how you can read people, with a strong story and weird characters tying things all together.
This time round, though, it'll be easier to read people than before thanks to the addition of a new side-kick for Phoenix in the form of the red-headed Athena Cykes, who has the ability to psychoanalyse witnesses to help you get to the bottom of each case. Using her 'Mood Matrix', you can detect the emotional states of the various witnesses to work out if they're surprised, angry, happy or sad - and these feelings can then be compared to the ones in people's statements to uncover discrepancies and challenge testimonies. So, nothing like we predicted at all, then.
Seems these faces don't show the jury's reactions after all...
Somewhat unusually for the series, this next instalment is set to be released as a download-only game, available exclusively from the Nintendo 3DS eShop rather than on a cartridge. Apparently the reason behind the shift is that it's always been a challenge to drum up enough "long term retail support" for the series in shops, whatever that may mean. The Phoenix Wright games have long been some of the rarer DS games around, thanks to their rather limited print runs, which usually saw the few thousand copies released being snapped up by fans within a few days of their launch. According to the company's financial reports, the Ace Attorney series as a whole has sold just 4.4 million across 16 games (although many of those are reissues and remakes of the original Phoenix Wright trilogy) - not exactly stellar sales figures, but it's probably to be expected when newcomers can't actually get into the games by virtue of not being able to find copies! Add in the costs of translation, production and distribution and you can see why Capcom have gone for the cheaper option this time round. We'll just be keeping our fingers crossed it comes with a substantially cheaper price to offset the lack of a physical product.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies is set to hit the 3DS later this Autumn, although no concrete release details have been given so far, aside from the fact it'll only be available to download through the Nintendo eShop. In the mean time, we hope you have no objections to a brand new trailer:
