Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law
January 18,2008 - Adult Swim's Harvey Birdman is a hilarious courtroom cartoon that services the many fans of the great Hanna-Barbera cartoons from a few generations back. The show is about superhero-turned-lawyer, Harvey Birdman, who cracks zany court cases revolving around Hanna-Barbera-licensed characters such as Secret Squirrel, Morocco Mole, and plenty of other popular cartoon characters (that weren't The Flintstones or The Jetsons). The dialogue in the show is a bit risqué (which is why it's in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim timeslot), but considering the courtroom humor it brings, many would think that it would make a fantastic game. Fortunately Capcom, who basically invented and perfected courtroom-themed gaming with its Ace Attorney series, jumped aboard to handle this project. While it does a fair amount of justice to the hit TV show, it sadly falls short of any expectations anybody had of it being a good game.

For those of you unfortunate enough to play one of the games on Phillips' failed console, the CD-i, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law has the same eerie feeling. Not only does the game fail to feature a respectable gameplay length, but there's hardly any gameplay at all, which is very unlike Capcom. On the consoles, especially the Wii, you're pretty much sitting there playing an interactive DVD game, and they aren't really that fun.

Attorney at Law is divided into five episodes. If you're a fan of the show, you'll feel right at home with the hilarious conversations that ensue with Birdman and the rest of the cast. Like the Ace Attorney series, gameplay in Harvey Birdman involves a lot of menus; in fact, it's nothing but menus. You'll venture through different areas in the investigation portion of an episode, talking to various witnesses and examining just a few clues in the few places you do get interactive with. Unlike the Phoenix Wright games, though, nothing in Attorney at Law has any sense of depth. Gameplay is especially bare-boned, and most of the time you'll just be laughing. Whether you're laughing at the dialog or how boring the game really is depends on you.

Most of the gameplay comes from the actual courtroom action. It does have sort of a Phoenix Wright style to it, but you don't have all that many options to choose from--again, a lack of depth. You'll engage in cross-examinations with a whole bunch of witnesses telling their BS stories and you have to find holes in their testimony by showing evidence that contradicts what they're talking about. You also have the option of pressing every statement, but that actually ends up useless as almost nothing you press out of a witness affects his or her testimony. If you make wrong decisions, you get a strike, but if you're truly paying attention to the dialogue (which isn't really hard), rarely will you ever get anything wrong because you're usually left with three choices; two of those choices are outrageous, leaving the last choice right because it's the only one that makes any sense. They're there simply to pleasure the player with utter courtroom stupidity. Now if you thought that was crazy, we never addressed the possibility of shooting the opposing lawyer to win the case by default... Oh wait. Darn.

Aside from the humor--both from how funny the conversations are and how bad the game is, the main highlights of Attorney at Law are the visuals and the sound. As stated, the game is essentially five excruciatingly extended episodes of the series (an actual episode in the series ranges from 10-12 minutes). Whether you're playing the game on a console or your PSP, there really isn't much of a difference with how the game looks. You'll get the same color and amount of detail and style you get with a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and that's where you'll get most of the pleasure playing, or rather... watching, the game unfold.

The factor where the game absolutely shines is in the game's sound. Aside from the unnoticeable music, the dialog is extremely spot-on. Almost the entire cast, except Stephen Colbert, lends their vocal talents to the game, and the historic sound effects heard in any classic show on Cartoon Network really make the game a pleasure to listen to.

You've probably read other reviews and previews of the game on other sites and wondered why Phoenix Wright was never mentioned despite the fact that combat did use sort of the same system. That's because in almost every facet, Birdman pales so much in comparison to Phoenix that they aren't even worth comparing. Nevertheless, Harvey Birdman still provides an interesting experience and while it is worth watching, it's not something you want to be paying $30 for, even if that's a fairly small amount. Either way, at a measly four hours or less, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law is barely an okay rental. If anything, it will keep you busy for two days during the wait for Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice... too bad it’s not on the DS.

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