Phoenix Wright and the Fallacy of Infallibility

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

System: Nintendo DS

Developer: Capcom

NA Release: October 2005

Ace Attorney is a series I would follow to the grave. I freely admit that its logic can feel a little spacey at times its representation of the modern justice system is about as solid as Taco Bell's representation of Mexican food, but engaging mysteries, a cast of extremely likable characters and the exciting back-and-forth nature of its courtroom battles more than makes up for any shortcomings.

Ace Attorney is obviously not a “standard” game series in terms of action, but it's still easy to assume some basic tropes. Each case is primarily a “Point A to Point B” affair, with the end goal being the acquittal of your client, the defendant. You accomplish this by “defeating” your opponent, the prosecutor, in the legendary ways of defense passed down by your forebears, Perry Mason and Matlock.

Pictured: The former face of edge-of-your-seat courtroom action.

Of course, as this is a game, you always want to win, right? And since earning the freedom of an actual murderer would besmirch the essential nobility of your character, that means all of your clients have to be innocent, right?

It would have been easy enough for that to have been the case. A course of constant victory is so expected in the medium that hardly anyone would have ever batted an eye if a flawless record was in fact the goal.

But then a case comes up (I will not go into specifics as to which) that threatens to throw this concept out the window. It's a powerfully played twist that drives home the stories and connections between the characters—by far one of the series' strongest points—over simple criteria for winning. Playing Ace Attorney is not so much about reaching specific endpoints as it is about uncovering the truth in each case and the threads that tie them together and to the characters; and often the very rivals you face, by serving as the voice of opposition against your imperfect character, ultimately become partners in arriving at this greater good once they eschew their own desires to be perfect.

Which is not to say you won't still take sass from them.

Now, let me pull back and give you a number: 1,071. It probably doesn't ring a bell, but it's a big, shameful figure. This is the number of days (as of April 4, 2012) since Congress has passed a real budget for the United States instead of a steady stream of stop-gap measures. Being unable to work out something so essential to one's country for nearly 3 years is horribly embarrassing—or you would think so, at least. However, Republicans felt wise in trumpeting the 1,000-day mark without a budget in an attempt to hurt Democrats, even though they are very much responsible for this mess as well.

Ideally, the government system was set up as a means of debate and resolution with the greatest good in mind. Today we're lucky if we get a few bi-partisan bills on weak subjects, and are even luckier if they actually make it through the legislative houses. Instead, both parties seem so locked on being “the ones who are right” and scoring superficial zings on their opponents that they can't see their self-made arena is collapsing in on them.

So yeah. A video game starring a bumbling defense attorney and his burger-loving assistant understands more about tact and compromise than the most powerful government in the world and its parties' most stalwart supporters. Think about that this November--or heck, just the next time you're arguing with someone.

Sonic Rush and the Inner Monologue

Sonic Rush
Platform: Nintendo DS
Developers: Sonic Team and Dimps
N.A. Release: November 2005


Do you know how certain things tend to tie together in your mind? My birthday is just a couple days away, on Nov. 15. It's a Tuesday this year, making it a prime release date for games like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Halo: Anniversary, but there's only one game I associate with my birthday: Sonic Rush.

Released Nov. 15, 2005, Sonic Rush is not only one of the higher points in the the tumultuous modern generation of Sonic titles, but also marked the debut of my favorite character: Blaze the Cat.

You can tell she's a different Sonic character because she's wearing reasonable pants.

Blaze is a princess from a separate dimension who is charged with protecting her land's Sol Emeralds, mirrors of the series' famous Chaos Emeralds. A stalwart dedication to her duties has resulted in her being quite solitary and socially underdeveloped, although through the course of the game she learns to embrace the values of friendship.

In a cartoonish realm that highlights very bubbly and/or forward personalities, introverts--especially in female characters--seem to rarely find much of a platform or popularity.

Although a new one did show up last year. It's always the purplish ones.

Blaze, however, has managed to establish a healthy and positive following. In a lineup of characters that have very one-track motivations ("I want to beat you, Sonic!" "I want to prove I'm superior, Sonic!" "I want to knock you out with a hammer, tie you to my bed and ravage you until every one of my raging biological desires is satiated, Sonic!") Blaze's separation actually makes her feel relatively deeper.

But if a character is not wont to be chatty, how do you reveal enough of him or her for the audience to care? It's really not that hard if you're not using voice acting: reveal the inner monologue through text!

A hefty amount of Blaze's text in Rush is not her talking to other characters, but herself in her mind. The shortness of her spoken responses come through, but are also matched with lines of inner mulling over her choices and behavior that make you empathize with and even feel a little sorry for her awkwardness. It's not the deepest soliloquy you can find out there, but as Sonic's plots are never that deep to begin with, it still proves effective and outright fascinating.

It's likely my journalistic background talking, but I wish the inner monologue was a more regularly applied technique. I heard so many manufactured soundbytes in my time that I started wondering just what a politician or press rep was really thinking while they were talking to me. And I now realize that my thinking of that back then was yet another truth hidden within my mind as I went through my own reporter motions.

There is an entirely separate universe of thoughts and feelings others will never know, locked away in each and every one of us. Perhaps it's best we can't access them in each other--I doubt society would be a better place if some of those secrets were let out--but in the realm of fiction, it's a reminder that every word we hear can be floating on a hidden ocean of thoughts.

Professor Layton and a Gentleman's Patience

Professor Layton and the Last Specter

Platform: Nintendo DS

Developer: Level-5

N.A. Release: October 2011

A stereotypical gamer action that has always annoyed me is the way some will complain about any text and semblance of story building a game, demanding they get back to “the action” as soon as possible. I'm willing to hold some empathy if the game is nothing but bullets and explosions and suddenly wants to derail that for a small Shakespearean performance, but if a game is actually trying to establish a certain atmosphere or depth throughout its course, then its dialogue and recorded contributions are worth more than a spastic mash of the continue button.

Of all things, I thought puzzle games would be safe from this knee-jerk criticism. They're about as cerebral an exercise as you can get on a screen, and if a player is willing to take a hefty number of minutes considering the answer to a puzzle, surely an interesting plot would be worth the time as well.

Note the lack of stoners and dog.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter, as with the other games in the series, loosely frames its puzzles within an overarching mystery that reveals itself in pieces along the way. Kotaku's Stephen Totilo, in a recent “quick impressions” article, expressed his distaste with the way Last Specter establishes its plot:

“The problem is that the game opens with long cutscenes, a mistake in handheld gaming that I thought was exclusive to to the PSP and, 17 minutes into my first session, I only found one puzzle. I'm not playing Layton for the story. I want more puzzles, and I wanted them right away.”

I have no ill will toward Mr. Totilo, and his impressions are valid if this is what he felt at the time. However, I would like to offer a gentlemanly counterpoint.

I can clearly see how someone would be frustrated by cutscenes in a portable game if they had, say, limited playtime on the bus. The surge of phone-based games such as Angry Birds cater to this desire for a pick-up-play-and-quickly-stuff experience, and there is certainly no shame in that.

But to say that long cutscenes are a “mistake” for portable games that wish to employ them seems too broad of a statement. There are a great many people who play their DS and PSP at home for long periods of time. Each system possesses both quick-play games and lengthy RPGs that sink time into story. Both kinds receive loyal audiences and there seems to be no reason to decry one over the other.

A cutscene about reading? The horror!

To take the story out of Professor Layton would leave you with little more than an interactive puzzle book. Some people would like this, of course, and there are games out there exactly like that. But I'm not sure many Layton fans would want to see this happen to their series.

There is a unique and extremely charming style—both aesthetically and through its stories and characters—that sets the Layton series apart and helps drive its play. Is it always perfect? It may have a couple dull points, sure, as many stories do. But I doubt the majority of people who enjoy the series would be willing to drop it all to get to the puzzles quicker. It's not like Level-5 is just hacking this stuff up for filler. When your developer is working with the world-renowned Studio Ghibli, perhaps they know what they're doing.

I'm not so conceited to say that the mysteries of Professor Layton would appeal to everyone. That is a matter of personal taste and such criticisms should be respected. But to complain about the mere presence of a story over the actual substance of it, that... well, it causes an ache inside that makes me want to hug a book. Our world becomes increasingly geared toward instant gratification, but sometimes we need an English gentleman to remind us how to savor our moments.