Eurogamer's John Walker writes: I took a break from ploughing through the latest Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice (review so very soon, do not fear), to spend a short amount of time with its PSP brethren, the Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law game. And when I say "short", I mean, "Inch High Private Eye after being shot by Myron Reducto's shrinking ray" short. There - if that reference made no sense to you, then neither will Harvey Birdman on PSP. Problematic. If it did, then you're certainly one of the better people, but this may not be enough.
The game is every bit as well written and performed as the TV show. Almost the entire cast has shown up, including Gary Cole, Paget Brewster, Murice LaMarche and Neil Ross. Regular guest stars also pitch in, including the excellent Lewis Black as Elliott The Deadly Duplicator. The only person absent, rather devastatingly, is Stephen Colbert, who is usually Phil Ken Sebben and Myron Reducto. The replacement is a fine voice actor, but he's still not Stephen Colbert. The animation isn't quite to the standard of the TV series, but since they started using Flash for series 2, the difference isn't that striking. An enormous amount of background gags, and extraneous detail have been put in, matching the pace and throwaway nature of the programme.
WTMG's Leo Faria: "Why do we do this? We are well aware that a specific licensed game isn’t good, yet we actually manage to be less critical, we manage to overlook its issues, and enjoy these tie-ins, these perfect definitions of the word “shovelware”, without an issue. What is it about these games that makes us more… tolerant? Is it the novelty of playing a game based on a license we like? Is it some kind of psychological effect that reminds us of simpler days? Does it mean that playing these games brings out the best version of the gamer inside of us?"
Drew Leachman writes: The From A to Z series lets our editors go back and take a look at games from past generations that are classics, overlooked gems, or just titles they remember fondly. The idea behind this is to pick five games from each letter of the alphabet, once a week to showcase. This delivers 26 weeks and 130 games to talk about. Hopefully it sparks some conversation, and of course plenty of memories.
Our second series will focus on Sony’s sophomore entry into the console business, the PlayStation 2.
Let’s continue with the letter “H”.
The lost Ace Attorney game!
