I’ve always loved adventure games. Being a child of the eighties, I was raised on text based games like Zork, Adventure and the Level 9 series. Naturally, when graphical adventures popped up, I was all over them, and loved Space Quest, Monkey Island and (to a lesser extent) Day of the Tentacle.

So I was thrilled to discover that Point and Click adventures weren’t dead. They were hiding on the DS. The first Phoenix Wright game kind of passed me by without noticing it. But part two (‘Justice for All’) got it’s hooks into me. A wonderful blend of Anime, Absurdity and court room ‘drama’, combined with fun and sometimes difficult puzzles. I played Justice for All on and off for about a year, and finally finished it on holiday.

The third part of the series, Trials and Tribulations, has been winking at me for a while now. After playing through the first chapter I put it aside, mainly because I had not time to play games just for fun. There were reviews waiting to be written, and a hungry monster (the presses) to be fed. Now, during the post Killzone silence, I finally had time to dig back in.

As usually, attorney Phoenix Wright is faced with several crimes, and he has to prove his clients innocent. Gameplay-wise, there are two ‘modes’: investigation and trial. First you traverse the different scenes and hunt for clues with the stylus. You meet different characters and question them by selecting topics. You can confront them with evidence if you smell an inconsistency, and doing so forwards the story to the inevitable trial. Here you basically keep interrogating the suspects and try to prove inconsistencies with your previously gathered evidence.

The cool thing is that you never have to meddle with keys or solve environmental puzzles, but still have some great puzzles to solve that require you to actually follow the story and deduce logically.

It’s odd that a game that basically hinges on logical deduction has a script that must have been written under the influence of several illegal substances. Characters aren’t just over the top… They have gone beyond the top into an alternate universe of tops to go over. And is this a true representation of Japanese law? And are judges really blessed with the intelligent of a half-eaten fruitcake?

None of this matters. In fact, it enhances my enjoyment. It’s great to just turn off that nagging part of the brain that wants everything ‘realistic’. What’s left is a great read with nice puzzles, and a familiar cast of characters. It feels very much like an interactive comic book where story not only matters but is part of the gameplay.

So Phoenix Wright will be in my DS for a few weeks to come, and I am sure I will enjoy this series for a long time yet.

What are you currently playing? The latest greatest or just something you had almost forgotten about? Let me know your stories from the back of the shelf!