Away game special: Matter for a retrial?

What I wrote yesterday about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies still stands. It's one stylish game that really makes great use of the 3DS' capabilities. Except for the 3D. That's just a bit above the standard.

However, there's a recurring issue with the game's substance.

As an interactive novel, two elements essential to this game's success are how the story develops through dialogue and its words themselves. The former element is fine: The game's dialogue is what you'd expect of a fine anime's great translation. However, the game's text reads like it was rushed through editing.

In some blocks of text words are repeated, verbs are doubled, or auxiliary words are outright missing. What's particularly disappointing about the game's text is that these errors recur with enough regularity to notice them. But, they're also rare enough to not detract too much from plain enjoyment of the game. This is especially true if you're a huge fan of the series, as my co-player is.

Nonetheless, it's disappointing that these errors exist in such a text-heavy game. The fact that Dual Destinies is an eShop exclusive doesn't help. If this game's text is representative of what we can expect from future text-heavy, eShop exclusives, then maybe Nintendo (or maybe just Capcom) isn't ready for the speedy publication that digital games entail.

Away game special: A stylish turnabout

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies is an incredible improvement over the first few entries in the series. It looks really slick with all of its 3D sprites and hand-drawn cutscenes. Its music sounds smooth. But its voices don't really match what I'd expected of recurring characters like Phoenix Wright himself.

The game still plays like an interactive novel, but because of its 3DS sheen, it comes across as much more of a game. That graphics and sound can transform something as simple as a story told linearly with periodic breaks for interaction really says something about the power of what makes a game a game. On the one hand it makes things like ebooks with soundtracks seem like the first step towards a branch of interactive storytelling that could see things like Isaac Asimov's Foundation or Arthur C. Clarke's Stranger in a Strange Land get turned into novel-like games.

Of course, Dual Destinies is also a reflection of the power of the 3DS. Most of the games in the series that came before it were up-ports from the GBA to the DS so their graphics and music were less than impressive. Plus, they were also rather short. If the first case in Dual Destinies is any indication, then the rest of the game will be pretty lengthy - a quality that's also thanks to the game's being made for the 3DS rather than the GBA.