Some brilliant writing undermined by technical issues, length, and inconsistencies.
Harvey Birdman is one of my favorite original shows on Adult Swim next to the Venture Brothers. It's clever, funny, and smart. Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law on the PS2 (The platform I played it on) manages to do all of this. The plots are funny and smart, taking thought to complete them as you 'press' (Press the witness/defendant/etc for more information on a specific part of their testimony) or 'present' a piece of evidence (related to a specified part of the testimony). The writing is funny most of the time but suffers an underwhelming first case.
Other than the court room gameplay, most of it feels rather weak, and you're lead by the hand during evidence gathering. Most of the time you absolutely cannot miss a piece of evidence and takes little more than going to another room and finding something right in your face.
When in court, you can either 'press' or 'present' to further incriminate the defendants or reveal innocence, a highlight of the gameplay. It takes some thought and you need to put two and two together from evidence gathered and things said by several hilarious and well remembered cast. Thanks to these portions of the game, it just barely passes the point of being a few episodes with meaningless clicks.
Technical issues take away a lot from this game. Video has problems with ''trailing'' pixels, ugly backgrounds (Blurry and some pixelated objects/edges), a few other little things. It certainly doesn't make it unwatchable, but considering most of this game is video, it's very disappointing that the video has quality issues.
And it's last major downfall is length. I completed the game in 3 and a half hours, including time spent watching (Unlockable) extras.
Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law is a game that fans will enjoy, though briefly and after the underwhelming beginning case. Non-fans can appreciate some of the games good writing, but won't be impressed with gameplay itself. [6/10]
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”.
Kyle of Insert-Disc reviews the Harvey Birdman game due to its new low price of $5.
"I'm a huge fan of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and I love the Harvey Birdman cartoon, so when I heard the game was essentially Phoenix Birdman: Ace Attorney at Law I was intrigued. The game works just like Ace Attorney, having you look around crime scenes, talk to people, and use evidence to prove that people are lying in court. Unlike Ace Attorney though, everything is blindingly obvious. You never have to think and at times it feels like you're watching a cartoon that makes you press a lot of buttons before anything actually happens."
Oh, and the last case was sort of weak, too. It would have been better if the last and second to last case had swapped order. I think they chose to do it that way because the last had the most popular character appearances.