Objection! Ace Attorney Titles

"Objection!"  The famous pointer finger thrust!

This past week, I got to spend a good amount of time playing the most recent Ace Attorney title, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.  The series focuses on titular attorney, Phoenix Wright (featured above), and his experiences (which, per its Japanese origins, unsurprising involve a half dozen under-age girls) in defending the innocent from vindictive, perfectionist, whip-happy, coffee-addled prosecutors.

The first three titles, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Ace Attorney: Justice for All, and Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, start with a crash in the murder of Phoenix's mentor, Mia.  Phoenix defends her younger sister, Maya, who is framed as the murderer.  Framing is an intense motif with the series, whether it be Phoenix's best friend, Larry Butz, or even his rival (or friend?), Miles Edgeworth.

Detective Gumshoe, the cutest detective ever.

The series also greatly utilizes the notion of spirit mediums, particularly Maya and her young cousin, Pearl.  This fun supernaturalism really completes the overall un-seriousness of the series.  It's goofy fun at its best, especially when Maya channels her dead sister to enhance her bust in order to get a witness to spill the beans.  A story mechanism, the Magatama, also allows you to "unlock" the secrets of people's hearts to better find the truth.

The end of the initial trilogy is some of the best interactive fiction I've had the opportunity to play through.  The conclusion of each episode is incredibly dramatic and heart-warming.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney follows the series with Apollo Justice, a young new attorney who ends up working for the now unemployed Wright and his "daughter" Trudy.  Justice has an ability to sense people's lies using a special bracelet.  The story only briefly keeps with the original trilogy, but continues to be good fun.  This game in particular makes great use of the DS touchscreen by completing scientific tasks (finger print analysis, luminol testing, etc.).

Apollo Justice, a.k.a. Herr Forehead.

Another joy of the series is the music and sound effects.  During pivotal court scenes, the music becomes incredibly dramatic to the point of raising my heart rate, and both your character and current prosecutor will shout out "Objection!" to indicate a turnabout in the case.  The "voice acting," such as it is (the few one word shouts) is actually brilliant.

Finally, the most recent title released (and why I started this epic review in the first place) focuses on Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix's first rival prosecutor.  This game is a significant departure from the original games as you actually move Miles through third person crime scenes.  Also unlike the other games, there is no courtroom drama, instead rebuttals about Edgeworth's logic play out, requiring you to use evidence in order to find the truth.

Edgeworth, and his weird ruffle thing.

All in all, the series is a blast, especially if you're into interactive fiction.  The first three games are incredibly difficult to find, even at GameStop, but they are available on Virtual Console for the Wii.