GAMES

So wrong…and yet so Wright…

Like Disposable, you’re probably a fan of Capcom’s excellent Phoenix Wright games on the DS and, previously, the GBA (oh, and there was a release on the PC, too, but that’s another story.) I finished a mini review of Justice For All a few weeks ago and if all goes well it should make it into Issue 7 of the magazine. However, since this place is a deserted wasteland and I’m using my other Blogger haunt as a lab for my “five-word-opinion” experiments, I’d like to use this space to ramble about where the games succeed and where they, er, don’t.

Immediately, at least, Phoenix Wright is a series that’s easy to dislike. It’s a retrograde formula that meanders along a linear path, with simple audio, scant animation and dated mechanics of item manipulation and conversation. It’s impossible to deviate from what the developers want you to do without wasting time or being punished, and there are times when the trials and Psyche-Locks can, at best, have you second-guessing the developer’s intentions and, at worst, have you abusing the ability to save anywhere as you try every option available until you succeed.

I liken it to Final Fantasy VII: I love that game, but I mostly love it for it’s story, characters, and evocative locations. Why? Because it’s gameplay is, being brutally honest, a series of conversations (and maybe the odd minigame) bookended by dozens of random, turn-based, tiresome battles. Battles that, being the hopeless case that I am, I can only win by first going to the World map and beginning a long grind to the point were my adversary is a walkover. It’s the equivalent of Wright‘s game-save abuse.

I think that games don’t necessarily have to be delightful and immediate in order to be rewarding; Wright‘s more detail-heavy scenarios only serve to make the game a more thought-provoking experience. At the most basic level, this can be seen by the fact that, in so many cases, the real culprit uses a misleading personality to hide their true self (Dolores Willow, April May.) Further cases then build the complexity up to a point where the finale is as headache-inducing as it is ingenious, and the revelation of the truth is nearly always a fitting reward for the hours you spent trying to out-crazy the solutions you were dreaming up: proof that retrograde formulas with dated mechanics confined to linear paths have their place in gaming.

qazimod