Phoenix Wright: The First Turnabout

It's strange there haven't been more mobile games based on lawyers, when you think about it. After all, there's plenty of books, films and TV shows based on courtroom drama. Yet in the baffling continued absence of a mobile game based on Rumpole Of The Bailey or This Life, phones have been fallow ground for legal-based action.

At least, until now. Ladies and gentlemen of the mobile gaming jury, meet Phoenix Wright.

If you already own a Nintendo DS, the cartoon lawyer will be familiar from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Phoenix Wright: Justice For All. The gist is simple: you play a sharp defence lawyer who has to save your client from being convicted of the grisly murder of his girlfriend. In this case, the client is also a childhood friend, and the evidence is damning. Or, at least, so it seems...

The game is set entirely in the courtroom. It follows the course of the trial, with the accused giving his point of view under cross-examination, and you getting to chime in with advice every so often.

However, it gets interesting once the first witness turns up – a newspaper seller who says he saw the defendant running away from the scene of the crime. As he speaks, you can jump in by tapping '1' to press him on particular points, or '3' to shout 'OBJECTION!' and present some evidence that proves he's lying.

The evidence is taken from your Court Record, and includes items such as the murder weapon, the victim's passport and the murder autopsy. Presenting the right item at the right moment will expose the witness' tissue of lies (we're not giving anything away here – in the game's intro scene you see that he's a wrong'un) and get your mate off Scott free.

Let's cover the good points first. Phoenix Wright looks nice, with attractive (if repetitive) cartoon visuals. And the core idea – of getting to the bottom of whodunnit – is gripping.

On the other hand, we've got niggles about how the game has been localised. Well, we should say 'localized' – all the American spellings have been left in. One clue also revolves around the time difference between the courtoom and Paris, which isn't much help if you're making the natural assumption that you're on London time.

But there's a bigger, gaping hole in the evidence supporting spending a fiver on Phoenix Wright in the first place. And it's this: the game lasts for 25 minutes! That's right: in less than half an hour, we'd finished what we thought was the first case on offer, only to find a message telling us to watch Capcom's website for future downloads.

What's more, you don't even do that much in the one case that's on offer. We counted: during the case, we pressed the witness four times, made three objections, and answered a few multiple-choice questions. The rest of it's just scrolling through text – although admittedly you should be using your brain cells while reading to spot inconsistencies.

Cased closed? Well, here's where it gets a bit complicated. Capcom is actually planning to release 18 separate parts to Phoenix Wright on mobile, each as a separate download. This first one is really an introduction and future parts will be longer, including some based on the Detective mode from the original DS game, which finds you grubbing about in crime scenes to find clues.

Capcom says that each part (download) should provide 30-50 minutes of gaming, depending on your skills. The problem is that it's the mobile operators who set the prices for mobile games – and here in the UK, 3 is currently selling this first part of Phoenix Wright for a gob-smacking £4.99. For less than half an hour's gameplay, that's a rip-off.

Even if the future parts have more meat to them, a fiver for 30-50 minutes of gaming seems steep, considering you'll end up paying nearly £90 for all 18 parts. But if they're priced at, say, a couple of quid each and have more to them, they'll provide good value (although owners of the first DS game will probably opt out, as they're based on the same cases).

With that in mind, we've given this first part an overall mark of '5'. There simply isn't enough to it, even as a gentle introduction to the game's concepts. However, it has certainly whetted our appetite for future installments, and if you see this initial installment on sale for £2 or less, it's worth picking up just to get up to speed on Phoenix and co.

Phoenix Wright: The First Turnabout

This courtroom drama is good while it lasts, but it certainly doesn't last long
Score
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)